Of Worth
by YourFriendlyNeighborhoodGeist
Summary: Ellie Reiker is only six. She's only a lieutenant's daughter. And she's only just found out she's a psyker. Everything is about to change. Rated T for dark thematic context, later progressing violence, and eventual strong language This is going to be a long one. I'd adore some constructive criticism/feedback!
1. Chapter 1 Histrionics

**Part 1 - The Black Ship**

Chapter 1 - Histrionics

* * *

A screech so shrill it could only belong to a child ripped through the stale, recycled air to wake Lieutenant Nic Reiker. He rolled onto his side with a groan and reached out to his wife, shaking her by the upper arm with a sleep-hoarsened, "Your turn, Jez."

She remained immobile for half a moment with a grudging groan before pushing herself up off the pillow and throwing back the covers. The awful, penetrating bawl continued on, pausing only to the sound of loud, ragged gasps to fill up tiny lungs before resuming the racket.

As she continued to her daughter's room, Jez hazily considered that while nightmares were supposedly common in children, this was taking it to an extreme. Their daughter had been a quiet, self-effacing toddler, and serious, precocious child; and then she turned six. She hadn't particularly changed during the day; perhaps, now studious and painfully shy, she was even more withdrawn.

Night had become a problem. For two weeks now, Ellie had woken from a deep, almost comatose-like sleep. At first it had been with whimpers and claims of nightmares. Concerned regarding so uncharacteristic a development (and at Jez's insistence), they'd coddled her. Then, after a serious discussion that this new habit could not continue, they'd firmly kept her in her room.

The first night she'd screamed bloody murder until Nic went to check her. His stern presence and heavy hand to her shoulder woke her with a startled, guilty jump that immediately stopped untoward behavior. The second she cried, loudly and brokenly; Jez cracked the door, soothed her sweaty hair from her forehead, and after the girl woke with wide eyes near black in the dull gleam of the single small light in the room, she quieted.

Nic had taken the night before, when he found her fetal-curled beneath a blanket, catatonic and repeatedly slamming her forehead into the bulkhead. She continued the trance-like motion even after he guided her through the modest, otherwise empty nursery back to her cot. Tonight, it seemed, Ellie had begun the cycle again. This broken sleep was beginning to wear their nerves, and Jez couldn't help but summarily hope that this phase would end quickly. Her eyes half-closed, she fumbled on the control panel until the portal slid open.

The sound immediately amplified as she stepped in; it was then that her sleep-addled mind determined that something was seriously amiss. The tall bookshelf bolted to the wall had been haphazardly knocked over, dresser drawers upended and their contents strewn around the room; the mirror was cracked in a spider-web pattern as if struck in a single point by a considerable force. The few toys they'd seen fit to give her were crushed, or twisted, or ripped limb from limb.

The tiny blonde girl was sitting straight, legs extended as if she'd bolted up from sleep, her pale face screwed in terror and eyes shut. Her ear-piercing screech was interrupted only long enough for her to catch a breath and begin again (if possible) louder.

Forging through the zone of destruction, Jez reached out, hoping to wake her as before and cease the noise. The tiny, frail fingers of her child deflected her touch before grasping and crushing her wrist with a vice-like grip someone so small had no business having. The little porcelain doll-like face snapped up, long-lashed eyes fluttering open to reveal her pupils rolled to the back of her head, and she growled something cursed and incoherent in a gravelly register.

She then fell onto the mattress, form and fingers limp, her thin chest heaving with hyperventilation. Jez pulled back until she hit the wall, washed with panic, nursing her wrist, her hand covering her mouth to stifle her sobs.

* * *

"You're certain, then?"

"Unequivocably," came the reply in a sweet sort of twanging drawl that indicated a heritage on some backwater planet. It certainly wasn't the carefully slow, neutral tone of her father, born on the Battleship Lacertus as his father, and his before him; a word that big, she decided, sounded odd in that accent, and she much preferred the reply she'd heard previously while the source had been conversing with a colleague, the careless, "Sure as the Good Throne is gilded, darlin'."

He began, "There's no history of it in either of our families-"

"That's not necessary."

"I was under the impression that-"

"Unless you've got an alternate explanation, Lieutenant," the second voice interrupted, muffled negligibly from the separating bulkhead and closed door, and certainly clear enough to be made out by small, acute ears. She knew young ladies didn't eavesdrop, but they were discussing her, and one could hardly help it when the speakers failed to modulate their voices and left her nothing with which to occupy herself.

"Is there one?" That would be her mother, quiet until now, with the barest glimmer of desperate hope.

"Possession," was the frank response of the churgeon – 'Doctor Gunn,' her memory supplied from the brief glance she'd gotten of the identifying placard on the white coat stretched tight across the tall woman's disproportionately large chest – "but categorically speaking, between the two that's certainly the worse option." There was silence for a long moment, broken by that same foreign-sounding twang, "I understand this is hard for you to accept-"

"What are the next steps?" Her father was all business, brushing past any implication of sentimentality on his part.

"The Oriens Ruboris is in the sector on its way back to Terra. I'll request it be hailed… Transfer shouldn't take more'n a week or two."

"And in the interim?"

There was an infinitesimal pause, followed by an almost grave, "I would think, Lieutenant, that, all odds considered, you'd want to make the most of what time you have."

"That seems as unnecessary as it does impractical, Doctor; and hardly safe."

What she could only imagine must be a stunned silence ensued. Obviously this woman did not know her parents. She proceeded with a slightly unsure, "Then it's either here or the brig, and frankly that's no place for a girl that little – she'd worm through the bars easier'n a joygirl is on Ascension Day." After brief, heavy silence, she amended, "Not that you'd know anything about that, sir. As it is, in the med bay I'm uniquely suited to monitor her-"

"And if she gets out of hand like last night?"

"There are certain drugs I can use to sedate her if the need arises," was the confident reply.

"Whatever is safest for the ship, Doctor. If there's nothing else…?" He left the query without end, clearly excusing them.

"I'll just leave you to say goodbye, then."

There was silence for a moment before he rejoined curtly, "I wouldn't care to cause... _histrionics_." There was the sound of a portal opening – obviously into the exterior gangway – footsteps, and then silence.


	2. Chapter 2 Doctor Gunn

**Part 1 - The Black Ship**

Chapter 2 – Doctor Gunn

* * *

It was quite some time later that Master Churgeon Saoirse Deatrix Gunn opened the door that separated her office from the infirmary room into which she had guided one Giselle Reiker. She undoubtedly dreaded the conversation to follow.

The Lieutenant – 'Lieutenants,' she corrected herself with her slightly upturned nose still buried in the file of one Lieutenant Jezail Reiker who had, the good Doctor had decided, far more by way of beauty than backbone if her response to her husband's decree was any measure thereof. The alabaster-skinned woman's agate-blue eyes had lingered fractionally too long on the door to her child as if for a heartbeat she had considered staying the extra moments to say goodbye, despite the new fracture to her lower arm, before shunting the thought aside.

As it were, the Lieutenants displayed an inclination to explain neither their abrupt and complete disappearance from their daughter's life nor the reason for her equally abrupt seclusion. 'Quarantine,' she again amended her thoughts with the word the girl's father would have used, 'as if the waif could spread a medically undetectable genetic mutation by sharing air.'

Perhaps that was how he rationalized leaving her office as if his wife had never borne him a child; or perhaps it was that a stern Imperial Navy officer with a pedigree on the Battleship Lacertus regarded his sole, fragile progeny as a poor enterprise on his behalf and was glad for the opportunity to begin afresh; or perhaps, she considered, she herself, a psyker to boot, made him as uncomfortable as his daughter had, and he had decided it would be better – safer – for the youngest Reiker to remain 'with one of her own kind.'

She glanced over her heavy handful of files to find the girl asleep, curled into herself for warmth and huddled on the same straight-backed metal chair in which she'd been left, though a bed and blanket lay not a meter away. Surely she couldn't be six… the slim, deft hands of the skilled churgeon flipped through her stacks in hand to medical charts. Her intense, turquoise eyes flicked rapidly over a height and weight modest for a child two years her junior; perused scans of bicuspid valves and renal fusion; and landed finally on a karyogram missing the final chromosome.

Turner's Syndrome – as she identified with a further moment's thought – was considered a rare but harmless anomaly: an omission, not a mutation, something that would be monitored, but go unreported to the Ordo Hereticus. Ironic, she thought, that being spared despite one condition, young Miss Reiker would be condemned for another; and funny, she considered, that Fate would see such a pretty thing, destined by genetics to remain tiny and childlike (and should her uncanny resemblance to her mother hold, elegantly delicate), supplemented with an intense (certainly tripping the border of 'dangerous') psychic potential.

It was that extreme potential, in conjunction with certain other factors such as the talent's hitherto expression, the child's age, and what she could only mentally classify as 'hardiness,' that had dimmed her hope that little Ellie would survive the arduous process of Sanctioning, even if she wasn't (as the doctor half expected) summarily chewed up and spit out by the enormous sea of mostly mad humanity that inhabited the holds of the Black Ships. Trixie Gunn, herself, had been a sturdy girl, born to grox farmers under the open sky of a quiet, agronomic backwater. At ten when, tall for her age and with a lean toughness bred down to the calluses on her fingertips, she was taken by the Black Ships, those inhabitants she didn't charm with sweet country etiquette and jokes she roughly rumbled with, securing her unassailed passage back to Terra. Sanctioning at the Scholastica Psykana exhausted her double what reigning in a stampede five times a day every day would have, and she pushed herself to avoid the fate of some of her classmates, who fell behind – and were tossed aside. This wisp of a girl didn't stand a chance.

"No-" the girl had spoken in her clear, mellow voice as if to refute the last thought that had crossed the churgeon's mind. Curious, the woman raised her head from her reverie to find the child still sleeping. Despite this, Miss Reiker emitted a panicked, plaintive noise, and her curled form began to rock in the chair without physical effort, as if buffeted by an enormous gale. She repeated the close-mouthed whine higher, her breath becoming heavy, and Trixie was quite suddenly, wholly aware of the Immaterial disturbance centered on – no, her psyker's sixth sense corrected her mind almost immediately – coming from her new ward. By the time she'd made it across the narrow room it seemed as if the induced gravity of the ship had weakened enough for everything not bolted down to float a few inches from the deck.

Though the doctor's psyniscience reached out to dampen the girl's stronger surges of power, such raw, unpredictable talent rendered the effort modestly effective at best. Kneeling before her in her gentlest bedside-manner, she spoke as if the girl were awake and she merely wanted her attention, "Giselle?" There was an almost imperceptible hitch in her breath, which mounted louder and shallower, and the floating objects in the room commenced jittering uncontrollably. "Ellie, can you hear me?" she tried, this time with a warm and firm temperance; a few of the heavier objects in the room thumped down to their rightful place. Trixie's slim, steady hands came to curl lightly around the hyperventilating girl's bony, rocking shoulders.

"I need you to breathe slow for me, darlin'," she prompted, like a mother coaxing a child; the girl's breathing finally steadied with a sob-like whimper of fear.

"Ellie, I need you to sit still'n put your hands down for me." The rest of the room's accessories clattered back into place, and her body settled with tears streaming down her face.

"And now, Ellie," the churgeon said, "I need you to wake up."


	3. Chapter 3 A Monster

**Part 1 - The Black Ship**

Chapter 3 - A Monster

* * *

The tiny creature took an enormous, greedy gasp as her wet, sapphire eyes shot open with an animal terror behind them; she pitched forward as if about to fall before catching the doctor's forearms and clinging to them desperately. As her severe disorientation faded, grounded by the intangible thread spanning from the gaze of the woman who called her back to reality, Ellie's grip loosened and she straightened herself, ducking her head to conceal her mortified expression and brutally wipe away her tears with her sleeve. With a voice husky and inhibited from her recent sobs she whispered, "It happened again, didn't it?"

"Didn't harm a thing, darlin'," the blonde churgeon replied with a smile – the sort, Ellie had already noticed, that made men tend to do stupid things when offered by a woman as stunning as Doctor Gunn. Neither the response nor the smile put the girl at ease.

"I tried not to fall asleep." The assertion was diffident but in no way caged for sympathy, pitiable as it was. Before Trixie could respond, the girl shook herself like a herd-hound blasted with grox-sneeze, raised her head, suddenly as sober as her father had been, and queried, "What is the Oriens Ruboris?"

"Oh-" the churgeon sounded both taken aback and, she realized, (despite her effort to the contrary) relieved. "You heard that."

"The bulkheads are thin," she explained by way of apology.

The doctor swiveled to the door perplexedly, a tiny crease forming in her flawlessly arched brows. After a brief moment considering her own experience and confirming that this was not, in fact, the case, she turned back to the girl. Sounding genuinely intrigued, she asked, "Have you always heard through the walls?"

"Not always, no," the child replied, with a little knot forming in her own brow.

The doctor rocked back on her unreasonably high stilettos and then sat on the edge of the bed, facing the occupied chair. Casually, she queried, "Did you want to hear?"

Penitently, the girl intimated, "I did. And I'm sorry." After a momentary, considering pause, she raised her chin almost defiantly, "And I'm glad."

Contrary to whatever Ellie had expected in reply to her unprecedented display of insolence, the churgeon gave a charming, earthy chuckle and sighed, "Me, too, darlin'… me, too." To explain the situation from the beginning – well, there was no beginning. It would have been a daunting task. At least the preliminaries had been covered. At least she had heard from her parents' own mouths that they had abandoned her without a fare-thee-well to the wolves that snapped up babe psykers to cast before the Throne.

"Because you don't know how to tell me I'm a monster." It was not a question. Its delivery indicated no doubt of its legitimacy. It was uttered prudently.

Any residual trace of relief or laughter lingering in Doctor Gunn's expression evaporated. Had the girl crossed to her and blackened her eye with a well-aimed fist, she would not have appeared so shocked. It was true, of course – in a way, at least. The fragile creature would have – could have – probably had – heard that from the cradle. Psykers were feared and distrusted.

To the general populace they were unstable gateways to the Warp, raining down destruction on a whim, always at risk of being ripped open by unbound daemons and tainting their worlds with ruin and damnation. But to have it addressed with such conviction by a grim-faced moppet… she mentally reeled, suddenly at a loss. How should one handle such a pronouncement? How could one? To dispute it – to support it – both would be lies. Coddling would leave her unprepared for the ordeal to follow. Agreeing would leave her without the mettle she'd require for any hope of survival. She opened her mouth, quite unsure of what she intended to say, when the girl gestured to not tax herself with one elegant little hand, the whole of which would have fit in Trixie's palm.

"It's alright," the young Miss Reiker assured her. The woman could hear self-loathing creeping in, "I understand. I'm not safe, so I have to go away."

"Ellie, don't –"

The dainty digits waved her off again. There was a certain inexorable timbre to her voice, echoing her father's logical disposition, tempered with the apologetic gentleness of her mother. "What," she repeated her earlier inquiry, "is the Oriens Ruboris?"

The churgeon took a breath, brow still knotted as she met the girl's cobalt spinel eyes, still considering how to address the verbal bomb she'd just dropped, still hesitant to allow it to go unaddressed. Her sensuous mouth pursed, and behind her lips she ran the tip of her tongue over one of her upper canines, and she finally explained, "The Oriens is one'a the Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica – operated by the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus."

The child considered this a moment, top teeth closing over her bottom lip, staring distantly. Her already negligible color drained from her, leaving her face bloodless and wan as she murmured so softly that Trixie only caught the end of, "– didn't mean to do something so bad…"

"Weren't anything you did, Ellie," she asserted quickly, and she received an abrupt, rapt gaze by way of reply. Correcting that error under such intense scrutiny, though, made the amendment seem all the worse. "It's… it's what you _are_."

A soft, slack oval relating dawning comprehension formed on her lips with a barely breathed "oh."

Damn it all this was harder than she had anticipated. She reached with a lack of surety to the girl, the gesture supplicating, inviting her to close the space between them. And perhaps because she was very small, and very frightened, and so terribly alone, the wyrdling came to nestle in the churgeon's lap. Soft, capable arms wrapped almost protectively around the child, and Doctor Gunn whispered into Ellie's hair, "No one chooses to be a psyker, darlin'. It's like being blonde – like having blue eyes – it just sorta happened to us. We can try'n hide that, but it'll always be there."

"Being blonde doesn't hurt people," the child murmured.

"And this can. You're right. But it doesn't need to –" there was desperate reassurance in her voice, "it doesn't always." Rocking gently, she explained, "If you're strong enough – if they think you'll be safe, they'll teach you to use it to help. Maybe like I do – maybe finding secrets – maybe opening doors others can't get through – maybe protectin'. Not all psykers are bad."

"How do they decide?"

"Tests – when you get on board, they'll test you."

"What will they test? How do I pass?"

With a wry smile Doctor Gunn held the child out, surveying her, and explained, "They'll look at how healthy you are – how clever in class – they'll ask you questions… see how strong you are –" at the sudden appearance of dismay on the observed brow she clarified, "up here," with a tap to Miss Reiker's temple.

In a hush, she asked, "What if I don't know the answers? What if I don't understand the questions?"

"Be honest, Ellie: only honest. They'll know."

After a long moment there was a stiffening in the girl's shoulders; they stilled unnaturally, her chin raised bravely and she whispered, "And what if I'm not? Strong or safe?"

The churgeon's arms tightened reflexively but she answered gently, warmly, "Then you'll stand witness to the uncompromising glory of the Throne."

The tiny body she held went pale and quite cold with a breathless whimper, "I'll die."

Doctor Gunn pressed her lips fervently to the girl's blonde halo again with a soft sigh. She considered her reply carefully, then intimated, "I was only a little older'en you when I was taken. I don't remember much before that, but I remember when I got on the ship I was very frightened, and a stranger told me something I'll never forget. He said that the only human life of any worth is one given to and in service. Remember that when you get there, darlin'."

The little creature relaxed against her, settled a smooth platinum head against a firm, warm shoulder, and nodded with quiet deliberation.

* * *

"Doctor Gunn?" A voice came over the vox calm, urbane, completely unruffled.

She buzzed back, "Yes?"

"We've been hailed by the Oriens Ruboris, Doctor. We're docking with her now."

Trixie's head snapped up, gaze darting keenly across her desk to zero on Giselle Reiker, clad in a plaid, pleated navy pinafore dress and a cable knit jumper two sizes too large; she sat quietly in the corner of the churgeon's office, book in lap. After a moment for this to register, she slowly raised her tiny, heart-shaped face, nursing teeth latched to her lower lip.

The psykers stood in unison, the woman holding out her hand to the girl and then closing dainty fingers in her own. The 'clack clack' of immaculate white stilettos sounded in time through the gangways, accompanied by a counter-rhythm of sturdy little spat boots trying to keep up with longer strides. And too soon they were in the bay facing brawny, armed men garbed in black with helmet-obscured faces.

A midnight glove reached to the child, who was snatched swiftly into the tall blonde's medical coat-clad arms. Holding her too tight, Doctor Gunn whispered fiercely against the doll-like alabaster neck, "Be of worth –" and then rough, careless hands wrenched her from the churgeon's grasp, and she was gone.


	4. Chapter 4 Your True Name

**Part 1 – The Black Ship**

Chapter 4 – Your True Name

* * *

She was strapped to a huge metal table; it was flat and cold and very, very uncomfortable. They had taken her jumper (she couldn't look down to check, but from the feel of the leather against her skin, they had taken everything) and replaced it with tubes running into her arms. She supposed that some were putting things in, and others taking blood out.

It was hard to tell by feel alone.

The room was completely black. She had been there – she couldn't figure out how long. There was nothing to mark the passage of time. _Be of worth… be of worth_ ran through her head over and over again. Doctor Trixie had been scared for her… sweet Doctor Trixie, who had given her books to read in her office while she was working on a man whose arm had gotten crushed in a pneumatic door and a boy from her class whose gums had gotten badly infected after he lost a tooth. She had read to her at bedtime for the week and given her a shot that kept the dreams away. It hadn't hurt a bit. Doctor Trixie would be a good mother one day.

'Be of worth,' she had said, right before the men had bruised her shoulders to separate them. It was the only thing that mattered now. She had to be of worth.

"What is your name, witch?" a gruff voice interrupted her thoughts. She hadn't even heard him come in.

"E-" her voice cracked a little and she cleared her throat, "Ellie, sir."

"Your _real_ name," he was impatient.

"Giselle Reiker."

"I said your _real_ name."

"But…" she looked to where she thought his voice was coming from, "it's Giselle Reiker, sir."

"I told you to tell me your true name!"

She flinched back against the table. He made her nervous – he made her feel like she was lying. Doctor Trixie said to be honest – that they would know. Why couldn't he see she was telling the truth? She took a breath and raised her chin, "My name is Giselle Reiker."

"What do you know about the Emperor?" this was a new voice, raspy, a little higher.

"He's mankind's savior… our guiding light… he watches us from the Throne and protects us against our enemies," she was trying to think of everything she had ever heard in chapel.

"And how have you cursed him?" the gruff voice demanded.

"Cursed?" he confused and terrified and saddened her. The very idea of cursing the God-Emperor was appalling. "But I haven't. I love him."

"What is your name?" the raspy voice fired at her.

"Giselle Reiker." Hadn't he been there when the other man asked?

"Your true name!" the gruff voice bellowed from somewhere to her right.

She began to wonder if they were both hard of hearing. Her mother's brother had been in a boarding fight and couldn't hear out of his left ear from the detonation of a frag round. Maybe that's what had happened to them. "Giselle Reiker," she said it slowly and clearly, just like talking to her uncle.

"Are you possessed?" the raspy voice demanded.

"Would I know?" she didn't think she was, but she didn't want to lie.

The gruff voice began screaming at her, so close to her face she could smell his breath and feel the flecks of spittle hitting her cheeks; it was a prayer of banishment.

"Are you possessed?" a new voice repeated the question; this one was cold, clipped – he sounded a little like her father.

"I don't think so, but I'm not sure if I would know," it was hard to answer calmly with the man still screaming in her face.

"What is your name?"

Weren't they listening? Would all of them ask her? "Giselle Reiker."

"Your true name!" the raspy voice hissed venemously, close to her ear.

Didn't they have a file on her? Doctor Trixie had known her name before they even met. "Giselle Reiker."

"How many daemons have you consorted with?" the cold voice had come to fill the ringing silence left just as the gruff voice finished his prayer.

"I'm sorry?" she wasn't sure what he meant.

The voice turned to hateful ice, "How many?"

"I don't think I know what consort means," she was following the sound of his voice around the table. Like a ghost, the memory of her conversation a week ago on the Lacertus ran through her mind, _Be honest, Ellie, only honest…_

"Bargained! Bartered! Made a pact with!" the gruff voice was in her face and shouting again.

"But daemons come from the Warp –" the Gellar field protected the ship from the Warp… daemons couldn't get through it.

"How many have you consorted with?" the raspy voice sounded like he had been facing away and turned as he was screeching.

"I don't understand."

The gruff voice began screaming a prayer of banishment again before he fell silent, cut off by a new voice. It was calm, reasonable. "Have you ever heard voices from people you can't see?"

"Sometimes… when I'm asleep," she didn't like those voices. She didn't want to talk about them.

"Have they asked to be friends?" She had a feeling he was asking something more important than it sounded. _Be honest…_ the churgeon's voice whispered in her memory, _They'll know._

"They grow teeth because I tell them no." There was silence for a moment, and because it seemed they expected more, she explained, "The bad dreams start, and when I wake up I've broken things. I don't mean to."

"If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth?" the nice voice coaxed.

"Of course," why couldn't they all be nice like this? Why couldn't they tell that she wasn't lying, like Doctor Trixie had said they would?

"What's your name?"

* * *

It was silent – finally. Quiet and dark and still, and her heart was full, full. After countless hours – perhaps days – of interrogation, the silence was as golden as the Throne. There had been a sharp pinch just beneath her ear and then the darkness around her swam inside her, and if they asked her any more questions, she didn't hear them and didn't reply. She woke now, still in the oppressive darkness; still strapped to the table; still without her jumper, her dress, her boots; still terribly cold; but she was alone with unbroken silence and peace.

There was a noise – somewhere far away… maybe the next room… It was high, soft, like a chime, but it didn't sound like a chime… it sounded like a trumpet. She twisted her head to look towards where it might have come from. There was only black, and the silence resumed.

Then from the corner of her eye there was a flash of light; it was so tiny… so far away… she didn't think the room could possibly be this big. It blipped soft and pink and then it was gone.

The sound came back from somewhere new this time. It blared like a claxon from the hall would, it sounded like the organ from chapel but distorted, like it was broken – she tried to pick out the melody before it stopped but it was gone. It left a smell… something strange – something pungent – like salt and machine oil.

The light whirled quickly this time, a burst of yellow-pink-blue mottled together in no particular pattern; it washed over the white skin of her legs and left them cold and numb and on fire. The noise followed quickly, louder again with arrhythmic clinking like chains that whistled after they hit, like a round firing in reverse; she flinched at each percussion, looking about to find its source, but it was everywhere. It was nowhere. It was silent.

The light was red and wet this time, it oozed over her as if trickling down onto her; warm, dripping on her face, metallic pinging when it hit her cheeks and spattered like blood from an open, spurting wound that was all at once visible, festering in horrid, inhuman flesh fixed directly in her line of vision. She twisted her head but it was still there with crackling static over the rush of liquid through pipes. Cotton wool was separating, nauseating her; it roared an animal sound like the deck hand had when he'd been run through with steel girding. His eyes glowed out of the dark. There was shine and glint – like the cabinets in the infirmary – but green, and something was moving in the darkness; she caught glimpses of it off the shine.

Its steps made a noise like grinding metal on ferrocrete with the hiss of an open vox filling the space between. It left a taste in her mouth like rancid carob and liquid cherry vitamins, resonating in her back teeth. The eyes watched her shrink from the ping ping ping of the wound opening and closing like a mouth. She didn't want this anymore. Safe – she needed safe – the bubble… she'd make a bubble. It came around her like the rubber-plasticine ball her father'd taken away from her. He'd said it wasn't safe.

It wasn't safe.

She watched something small grow, but it rotted as it did, like fruit that grew green and then black fuzz and withered under the orange light, coming from inside the ball. Orange was bad. It meant something was coming. The white noise hiss formed a whispered word… the word she was afraid of… "Friend…"

Her scream of 'no' was drowned out by the non-music of the broken organ, loud, ringing inside her head. She threw the rotten fruit away without her hands, it spattered and stank of iodine and rosewater and ammonia. The crackling static hissed its displeasure. Then there were no eyes, no wound. But there were teeth, bathed in dripping orange congealed light that turned the chiming trumpet into, "Come…"

She wouldn't. She couldn't run. She needed – something stronger than the bouncing ball. Her mother, cooking dinner on the gas stove – the water boiled in the pot above a ring of fire. The water was orange and gelatinous and bubbling thickly. The fire…

She clicked. A blue spark clicked over her heart, like her mother turning on the stove, waiting for the ring of gas to catch the flame. It didn't catch. She clicked again as the teeth separated and came to rip at the skin of her belly. She squirmed desperately. She clicked. The ring had to catch. She clicked. Orange gooey light dripped into her navel and pooled there. She clicked.

Somewhere, a lifetime and worlds away, a voice sounded like distant thunder, rumbling ominously, "I've seen enough."

One more click and it would catch, she was sure.

"End it," the thunder said.

She clicked, and the world went dark.


	5. Chapter 5 Solitary

**Part 1 – The Black Ship**

Chapter 5 – Solitary

* * *

The room was completely dark, but it was different. She was free to move around; there was no space for a table, or for four men. The room was not precisely three meters cubed: it was slightly less. She could tell because she was almost (but not quite) one meter tall, and if she spread her arms to use them like an end-over-end ruler, she could flip from her back to her front and then back again from one wall to another.

It was still cold, but she had her things back, so she could bundle her jumper about herself almost double when she curled up in a corner. There was no cot, but there was a bucket. She'd pushed it with the toe of her boot into one of the corners and tried to stay on the opposite side of the room. There were no noises or lights, but given how noise and light ended up the last time, she was fine with that.

In her corner, nearest the door (she'd found the seam for it on her third circuit about the room with her fingertips trailing the wall), she nestled her chin on her drawn-up knees. The darkness meant she didn't have to close her eyes to focus, so perhaps it was habit that forced them to fall shut. She had never clicked before.

She hoped she never did again; a big part of the problem, though, was that she only made awful things happen when she was asleep. That meant that she could easily hurt someone. If she clicked and the fire actually caught… she'd break so many things… so many people… She'd broken her own mother's ulna the last night she spent in the nursery. After that on the ship, she'd avoided sleeping until Doctor Trixie made it alright.

The churgeon had told her throughout the week what she remembered of her time on a Black Ship… and this was nothing like it. She'd said there were holds full of people, like a swarming sea of humanity that stank of unwashed bodies and poor sanitation. She'd said that when she made it into holding people were like caged wild animals; big ones, little ones… they all growled and tried to bite and steal one another's food. She'd said that they were all drugged – a stronger form of what she had administered at bed to keep the dreams away – all the time, so that they couldn't use their power to harm each other. She'd said that the very best thing someone as little as Ellie could do was keep her head down, her mouth shut, and stay away from the fights.

All in all, Ellie decided, whatever she had done during the tests, she'd caught a lucky break to have space of her own. She stood, and walked the perimeter of her black room, fingers again trailing the wall. She walked like she was trying to keep up with an adult twenty-five times in one direction, and then twenty-five in the other; it calmed her mind; she didn't count the circuits out loud. She liked the silence, the familiar, almost imperceptible hum of the ship through the floor, the taste of scrubbed air. This was a haven. She curled into the corner again, resting her head at the juncture of the walls, and stared into the darkness

Even better, she wouldn't dream. It was like the medicine Doctor Trixie had given her, only stronger. She hadn't been aware that she could feel the threat that was waiting for her to sleep when she was awake – and perhaps feel wasn't the right word, because it wasn't a physical feeling, or even a gut feeling. It was a sort of pressure just above the bridge of her nose, and it felt like her brain processed it near the place it processed smell. Sometimes it made her head throb, and sometimes it was familiar; now there was nothing there at all. This room was like her own, real bouncing ball. It kept her safe. And so, safe, her eyes drifted shut with no fear of nightmares.

When she woke, there was something pressing against her boot. Curious, she felt in the dark for it – cold, tin, flat – a tray, with a built in divot for some sort of food. Whatever it was her fingers had dipped into it as she was exploring the new acquisition. It smelled completely bland – and tasted the same.

She wasn't particularly hungry, so she moved the tray against the wall next to her. The walls were good – she could fumble about in the dark center of the room for goodness knew how long. Truth was, goodness knew how long she had been here – would be here – it was hard to keep track of time in the dark and alone. She had her thoughts for company, though.

She thought about the last book she had borrowed from the chapel, about how different her mother and Doctor Trixie had cooked, about her last math lesson, about her father stalking coldly out of their suite to answer a call from the bridge…

She thought about the other children playing catch, about handing an errant ball back to Dorn and the way he'd smiled and asked her to join them, and then the way he'd turned around in his seat to tell her a joke, and the way he'd rolled his eyes when Miss Jemedar told him to face forward.

She thought about sitting with Merica, sharing their dolls, their lunches, their secrets… She had plenty of memories to think about. She didn't want to think about the future.

After a while she fell asleep again, walked the room fifty times again, took a few mouthfulls of the nutrient-paste, thought, prayed – if this was what the journey to Holy Terra would be like, she could handle it. Just so long as she didn't have to think about what was coming, what decision those men had made, even though she had told the truth. It didn't matter what they had decided. She would serve as she could.

* * *

Some interminable time later, there was a rush of light swiftly blotted out. She stood immediately and gazed up at the man standing in the door. He was enormous – bigger than anyone she'd ever seen before, and light from the corridor glinted off his armor in black and gold. He had one glowing red augmentic eye that gazed into the room, and she focused on it because its light hurt her eyes less than the blinding brightness behind him.

Opening the door had let in new air, and it woke her near-smell; she took a deep breath. There was something there – something faint for only a moment beyond the smell of machine parts' friction, ceramite, and recycled air that couldn't quite get rid of the stench of the holds below. She wasn't sure what it was, but it reminded her of Trixie. She smiled shyly at him and murmured knowingly, "Oh… You're real."

From the glow of his red eye, she could see one of his brows lift just a bit. He stepped further into the room, turning to face her; her eyes caught insignificant details of him, lingering over the welds and joints of his armor, his bald head, the scar by his augmentic eye, the flare of his nostrils. He regarded her in silence for a very, very long moment; part of her wanted to melt into the wall to get away from him, and part of her was madly curious.

When his voice finally came, it resonated roughly in her chest with a deep, gravelly tone and no trace of an accent. He informed her dispassionately, "You will maintain your silence until I give you leave otherwise." She couldn't see his mouth moving, the shadows from the hall concealed it.

She bit her lower lip to stem the tide of questions she had.

"You," he said it quite specifically with a bit of disdain, "and your very existence are an affront to the Emperor." She knew it was the truth – of course it was. She was a monster, no matter what Doctor Trixie had said; oh, but it was a painfully shattering thing to hear. She had dared to hope. "You," his chin was held high, accusatory, "are a threat to the Empire's stability, because you do not know what power you wield, much less how to do so." But _how much _she wanted to learn. "You do not know the million horrors that could come to be because of you; you do not know the uncountable warp-beasts that want to rip through the scrap of your flesh; you do not know the threat you pose."

If she did, would she be safer? Then she realized: she wasn't safe enough. She knew what he would say next. She bit her lip so hard it bled to keep from crying in front of this man. "The Interrogators have judged that you should be sacrificed to the Throne." She lowered her head and nodded as she did, hoping she could blink away the moisture that had started to cling to her lashes. She wished he hadn't told her. "While this is the Council's decision, I fail to agree."

Her brows came together as she suckled the coppery blood from her lip, and finally looked up at him through a wet, swimming haze of barely unshed tears.

"I believe that there is the _potential_ that you could serve the Throne well." If desire could be translated directly to deed, how she would. "Should you prove to be of worth," his tone did not supply if he thought she would or wouldn't, "I will provide you the opportunity to serve as few others can –" his augmentic eye gave her an appraising, if cursory, glance; she focused hard on the floor and remained completely still, afraid that even the slightest movement would change his mind, "– and no other will."

Anything for the chance… she had none here… one with him… _Be of worth_…

"Come here," he commanded, "and kneel as you are before me." She complied in a heartbeat, her fingers laced together as if in prayer, lip bitten, eyes downcast. She could feel his gaze boring into the top of her head, like he could see inside her. "I will be your master now; you will address me by that title alone." His heavy hand was on her unbrushed hair, like a benediction, and he lifted her face until she could view his, still partially in shadow. Her dilated pupils constricted from the brightness beyond him. One of his eyebrows lifted, like he was prompting her – like he was waiting for something.

Taking a breath, she replied obediently in her mellow timbre, "Yes, Master." This seemed to satisfy him and he straightened his form. He had given her leave – at least for that – to speak and she slipped in an earnestly sweet, "Thank you."

He regarded her inscrutably for a long moment before he turned from her and moved to the door. Pausing at the threshold, he looked back to her, raised his eyebrow, and tilted his head almost imperceptibly towards the life that waited beyond.

* * *

_A Note from YourFriendlyNeighborhoodGeist:_

_This is the end of Part 1 (technically Chapter 1, but having all of that on one page for you folks would be overwhelming and probably incurably boring, what with scrolling and all). _

_If you've gotten this far and haven't reviewed yet, I'd really appreciate it if you took a quick moment to do so! _

_About half of Part 2 is written and/or outlined with detail notes, so more will be coming at some future time. Not trying to be a review glutton, but hearing what you have to say would seriously pump me up for working on this more!_

_Thanks for sticking with us,_

_-Geist_


	6. Chapter 6 A Good Man

_A Note from YourFriendlyNeighborhoodGeis t:_

_I'm honestly a little nervous continuing on with this, considering how little (that is to say no) feedback I've gotten. What's a girl got to do to get a review around here? Anyway, made some progress, thought I'd share. Thanks to my first follower! :-D -Geist_

* * *

**Part 2 – The Black Brand**

Chapter 6 – A Good Man

* * *

Ellie Reiker had never seen anything quite so big, or beautiful, or bright as the sky of Holy Terra. It was a luminescent sheet of gray, swirling darkly in places; it hurt her eyes, but she couldn't bear to look away. She followed closely behind her master, the Inquisitor Lord, as he stepped from the shuttle, all the while rubbing at the rough, new mark at her neck.

She turned her face up to see more and felt the strangest thing – something small and wet landed on her cheek. Her hand came up to it and she gazed curiously at the liquid shine on her fingers before her attention was again arrested by the sky. It lit up a section of clouds for just a second, and a distant rolling rumble followed swiftly after.

Her breath caught in a half gasp, half laugh, and she turned to smile up at him. He raised his brow just a bit. It was safe to talk. With exuberance and a bit of awe, she explained, "The sky sounds like you." The brow over his real eye (she'd never seen anyone with violet eyes before him) remained lifted, and his hand came down behind her. She stiffened, expecting censure, but it landed flat between her shoulder blades and gave a firm little push as he stepped off, reminding her to keep up.

* * *

What Doctor Trixie had said about the Black Ships was all true in an area called "general population." When Ellie had come on board there had been four guards surrounding her and armed servitors at the stations that they passed. Her master, on the other hand, walked around freely, unescorted, and she followed closely, not wanting to be left behind. He had taken her there.

General population was not a nice place to visit. The air was thick and hot and rank with the stench of unwashed human bodies, raw sewage, and spoiling food. There was a roar of noise from a hold full of people talking, shouting, singing, praying – all vying to be heard. They surged and churned against each other in a primally organic way that made her slightly nauseated.

She followed him in – yes, he went down there, into that mess – and she stuck to him closely (not going so far as to hold onto him as she had her mother when they were doing drills, though she'd considered it). They were eating and punching and pinning each other to walls for the Throne alone knew what. Some of them caught sight of her first, and leered hungrily like she was fresh meat to be hunted.

She touched the leg of his armor so that she could turn her head without drifting from him; because he, unlike she, was not being looked upon as prey. As a matter of fact all of them – even the enormously tall, muscled ones with sharp, broken teeth – parted around him. One of them, double her height who had been casing and pacing her saw exactly who she was with and wet himself, crying, scrambling desperately to get out of her master's way.

He began to speak as if giving a tour. "This," he rumbled clearly, still pacing forward and gesturing to the rabble around him, "is the general population. They represent some of the more pitiful examples of humanity." A few glanced almost guiltily at him as they fought to get out of his way. "These wretches' only worth is sustenance."

There were two children about her age along that wall, eyes closed, skin chalky, lips blue… she shivered. That could have easily been her. "This," he gazed around and then met her eye, "is where you end up if you slack off – if you fail me." She swallowed hard and glanced back to the wall. He continued walking towards a door out and she snapped back to his side, terrified of being stuck down here.

He held something up to the scanner next to the door and it opened at the same time that some sort of filmy, cloudy gas started expelling through pipes – first those in a half-arc unfurling around the door and then (she saw as she backed out of the room with a jump after him) the rest stationed around the room. That must've been the drug Doctor Trixie had told her about. If it was in the air, they couldn't avoid it.

The chaos resumed for only a second before, slowly, each figure began to sink towards the floor, crumpling into heaps on top of one another like so many corpses.

He was walking down the gangway, completely unperturbed, and, without bothering to check that she was still there, queried, "Any questions?"

She glanced over her shoulder, frowning a moment, and asked with a slow thoughtfulness, "Could they smell you? Is that why they got out of your way?"

He stopped short, an uncontrollable and unnoticed micro-expression of outrage there and gone. She stopped half a step later and then backed up. He stared down at her with one brow raised, face utterly impassive. She missed the tight danger in the over-calm tone that rattled her chest as he asked, "Are you implying that I have an odor?"

After a deep breath on her part, she explained, "I notice it," she tapped her forehead where her sinus cavities were, "here. Sometimes it's familiar, and sometimes it gives me a headache. It was on Doctor Trixie. It's much stronger on you. When I wake up from a nightmare it's overpowering. It's got different… colors… but it's always like," she thought for a moment, trying to classify it, "ozone."

He gazed at her for another moment before he (probably as gently as he could manage) cuffed her on the back of the head and stepped off again. She had never been hit before.

It hadn't hurt, but it startled her into silence, and she followed with head down and lip bitten. After a few paces he elaborated as if nothing had happened, still in a gravelly bass, still clinical, "That isn't smell. What you've taken note of is psyniscience: the psyker's sixth sense. It alerts one regarding immaterial activity – noticeably psykers, sorcerers, daemons, specially endowed or cursed items, places that those have been, objects on which they've used a power, et cetera, et cetera."

She tilted her head to the side. Near-smell had a name.

She considered another moment, then ventured, "Is the medicine why I couldn't sm-" she caught the slip, "sense them in there?" Because, she realized, she had indeed smelled them in there. The stench had been nearly unbearable. They just hadn't had _that_ smell – thousands and thousands of psykers, and not a hint of the prickly tingle that was now identified as psyniscience.

He regarded her for a beat, brow still raised, and prompted, "Medicine?"

"The white drug in the pipes," she clarified.

"Torpor," he supplied, looking forward again. "It reduces their psychic profile, and yours, which would make them more difficult for you to perceive."

"And they couldn't perceive you?"

"With psyniscience, no."

"So you're just scary enough without it?" she asked much like when she had asked about his smell: pragmatic, without guile, and with no intent at offense.

His brow raised as he faced her once more with an intentionally neutral, "Am I not?"

"You're-" she wracked her mind for the word she wanted, and finally came to, "impressive." He said nothing, at least out loud, but his expression was slightly incredulous. Her little brow knit for a moment as she gazed up at him, and she continued thoughtfully, "I'm afraid –" she clarified after another moment's consideration, "but of disappointing you." His chin lifted with the faintest trace of a sneer as he regarded her, his demeanor explicit: _both would be better_. Startled by it, she asked in a quiet voice, "Should I be? – Frightened, I mean."

"Most people who know what I am are."

"You're a man." She took measure of him for less than a heartbeat, and then smiled serenely, as if by so swift an observation she could determine enough to claim, "A good one."

His expression was flat and timbre condescending and almost – _almost_ – hostile. "I am a Lord among Inquisitors." He stopped and leaned towards her, looming, intimidating, and his eyes bored into her, "A harsh one."

She blinked rapidly, focusing intently on him with her bottom lip seized between her teeth; she swallowed hard and nodded once to affirm she understood. She didn't want to push his grace – or patience – and so she kept her opinion (that he was probably both) locked away in a secret part of her heart.

It didn't stay a secret very long, though.

Nothing did.


	7. Chapter 7 She Had Sworn

**Part 2 – The Black Brand**

Chapter 7 – She Had Sworn

* * *

There was actual, real hot water in the head… her head… at least for now. It was a small, closet-like cubicle, but it had a shower, and she didn't have to share it. It was a huge step up from the bucket in the far corner of her old cell in solitary confinement. That was where she had been earlier: where he had taken – rescued – her from.

It was where they put the powerful, dangerous psykers. She hadn't thought – didn't think – that she was either, really, but then she hadn't even known that there was a sixth sense. It was probably her stupidity that was most dangerous. Of course, it was probably that same stupidity that had saved her from being trampled, frozen, starved, or beaten to death in the holds.

It would have been a waste.

Even if her master hadn't picked her out, even if he had come in and callously informed her that they had decided that she was fit for no more than death, even if no one had said anything and she'd been led to the Throne without a word, it would have been worth _something_. She would have burned – still could, she knew – but she would have done it gladly. Gladly, she knew, because after a week alone she would have run out of memories, and the probability (or certainty) that she would be sacrificed would have settled.

And if it meant she wouldn't be able to hurt people, if it meant service, she would have burned for the Emperor with serenity, as bright as six suns for as long as her soul could bear, knowing that her life wasn't meaningless. And if she failed her master, if he sent her to the holds, she would fight to keep that privilege.

The hot water sluiced wonderfully into her face as she scrubbed her hair; it felt like it had been a week since she'd washed it, grimy with sweat from her interrogation, oil from the two days in her cell, ratted from thrashing about from that awful dream and real, restful sleep. Lathering her hair had always made for a good time to think. She wondered if it was because rubbing her head brought more blood to her brain.

The new lavatory was attached to her new room, which was about the same size as her old one (but with a cot and overhead lights) and attached to her new master's. 'He,' her mind mimicked his tone from the gangway without a trace of mockery, 'was a Lord among Inquisitors.'

She had had no idea what that meant, and must have stared at him like a simpleton before he explained: the Inquisition was a little like the Imperial Navy, not in their purpose or protocol, but in structure. Each Inquisitor was like the captain of his own ship. People worked for him doing various tasks to generate progress in the direction the Inquisitor wanted. Sometimes Inquisitors would work together in formation, sometimes they would share information, but most of the time they performed their tasks sufficiently alone. If an Inquisitor was a Captain, an Inquisitor Lord was an Admiral. Like an Admiral, the Inquisitor Lord had more authority, more responsibility, more resources, and much more experience.

She wasn't sure how that last part worked, because her master didn't seem at all old. As far as she could tell, he was older than her father but not as old as her father's father; perhaps forty or so. It was difficult to tell because his head was completely shaved and while he had noticeable scars (namely at his augmentic eye and a huge tear across his throat, which made her wonder if his voice had always been so gravelly), his demeanor rarely changed, and so wrinkles hadn't formed at the corners of his eyes and mouth as they were wont with age on someone with expressive features.

To the contrary, she had seen his mouth move to speak and one or both of his strong brows to shift in lieu of speaking, and nothing more. He was also, as she had realized at first glance, much, much bigger than anyone else she'd seen: taller and more heavily muscled and (so far as she'd seen) always in power armor. With age, men tended to wither or soften; he had the look of a man in his prime. She had meant it: he was impressive and particularly intense. And good: she had meant that, too; his work was service to the Emperor, and he would make her safe. He would teach her. There was nothing else she could ask for.

* * *

"I asked you to do one, simple thing." His voice was laced with contempt; not louder, not harder, just disgusted. "One thing." He towered over her, his eyes, one violet and one augmentic red, looking down the straight line of his nose at her with scorn as he growled, "It is… insufferably disappointing to have been so wrong. No control, no skill…"

She was weeping openly. "Please-" she begged.

He snorted in derision, "No dignity." He called in a guard from the hall.

"I'll try harder, I swear, I'm sorry-"

"Take her to the holds," he ordered. He hadn't even heard her.

She didn't put up a fight. The black glove grabbed her roughly by the arm, dragged her through the gangways faster than she could keep up, tossed her into one of the pens. She bit her lip to stifle her sobs, to avoid drawing attention as she slipped past people to get to the wall. The Torpor hissed from the pipes and the chaos into which she'd been thrown fell asleep, listless corpses crashing down and smothering her. She was so tired, drowning under bodies twice her size, and it took every last effort she had to wriggle away to lay, panting but free. Exhausted and sleepless, she watched for hours as no one moved, and then they began to rouse, some quicker than others, picking over the prone.

The man who had wet himself the last time she was here found her first. His lean fingers and long, dirty nails dug into her cheeks as he dragged her up, and he laughed in her face, stale, rancid spittle flying from his snarling mouth. Another with sharp, cracked teeth grabbed her arm, trying to wrench her from the first's grasp; he didn't seem concerned that if neither let go she would be torn down the middle.

Writhing, she struck at them as hard as she could, but her blows bounced off without a trace of effect. The first's hand slipped, slicing marks into her face, but she didn't care. She jumped at the second, catching him startled and off-balance, and she clawed at his face, tiny fingers ripping at eye sockets that emptied and then filled with welling dark blood far faster than she thought they could. Retching, she stumbled away but someone caught her from behind. Others were slowly surrounding her with madness, with stench, pressing in. He was crushing her ribs.

The Torpor and lack of air made her sluggish, and she couldn't feel the tingle of her extra sense, couldn't feel the dangerous well into which she could dip, into which she could fall, but it didn't matter. She had sworn. She took a huge gulp of air and gasped, "I'll die for the Emperor." And then she clicked. Once, twice, and then the world was on fire, wrapping about her, inside her, pushing out until it consumed everyone around her, their skin turning black and blowing away like paper, and then, sobbing, she dropped to her knees, pinned by the husk of charcoal still holding her.

* * *

She bolted upright in her cot, swallowing the scream bubbling up in her chest. Her hands felt around her, making sure that she hadn't burnt up her bed; her eyes frantically searched the walls of her room for any sign that the nightmare had been real. Panting, she rose and turned on the light, shaking so much it took her two tries with the switch. She wrenched the blanket from where it lay tucked, wrapping it around her like armor, and settled with her back to the corner, watching the door for irrational fear that any second he would burst through and send her away.

'A dream,' she firmly told herself, rocking gently, her mouth going so far as to move with the words, though not even a whisper escaped. 'Just a dream.'

He had said that she would begin tomorrow. He had said that he would give her a simple task. He expected her to do as he bid. She was terrified that she would fail him, that whatever he wanted she'd be unable to do. He had told her he was harsh. He had warned her of the consequences. She knew she needed to rest, to think clearly for tomorrow, but that dream…

She would take a night with dripping orange daemon light over that dream.

It took her a long, long time to finally fall asleep, exhaustion lowering her lids over blankly staring eyes, her body still intermittently shivering, and not from cold.

* * *

When she woke, he was gazing down at her, surveying the corner in which she'd curled, the blanket taken from the bed, the salty, dried tear-tracts on her cheeks, the overhead light and the hand reaching out toward its switch. His expression was impassive. Finally, he said in his chest-shaking timbre, "Breakfast will be in ten minutes."

He had laid down certain rules last night. He expected a generous degree of facile self-efficacy. She was allowed nowhere but her quarters without him. When in company beyond his, she was to be silent unless given leave. When alone she had permission to speak freely, but, she suspected, anything he found displeasing would be met with another whack to the head – or worse. He seemed, after all, a man of extremes. And so she had summarily determined it would be better to keep her silence but for necessity. So long as he demanded no explanation, this only required, "Yes, Master. Thank you," and so it was uttered in a slightly hoarse voice after wetting her lips. He left, and she scrambled to her feet.

Her new life was waiting.


	8. Chapter 8 Pride

_Yet another note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist:_

_Ladies and gentlemen welcome to what is easily our longest chapter yet! There's one, possibly two more chapters in this section, and then (though trust me, I have direction for the story) I'm thinking of taking a slight break. What I'd like to offer as compensation for your patience is an interlude of sorts that would wrap up a few loose ends (because we know the Inquisition likes to do that) and introduce a character who'll become important later. Out of necessity (violence, gore, sex, profanity, etc), it would be rated M, so let me know if that's something you'd have an interest in seeing!  
_

_On with the show, -Geist  
_

**Part 2 – The Black Brand**

Chapter 8 – Pride

* * *

After breakfast he had led her to an unpretentious study down the hall. There, he sat her in a straight-backed chair before a small table, and reached into a cleverly concealed pocket in the mantle attached to the shoulders of his armor. From it, he drew a single feather, gray with some mottling, and held it up; against his hand, it seemed a miniscule, insignificant thing. Setting it before her, he met her eye, and without preamble set her task. "Willingly move this." He then went to a chair set some two meters away, and sat, watching.

The girl took a breath, inclining her head towards her task so slightly, sitting without slouch or hunch, and placed a hand to either side of the feather. It was then that her tiny body stilled preternaturally, as if it had locked in place and every joule of energy not facilitating the soft, steady rise and fall of her thin chest and the intermittent blinking of her dark eyes was bent upon that single object.

She did not move for a long, long time.

After perhaps an hour, the Lord Inquisitor rose with an utterance of, "Enough," and left the room. It was entirely possible she hadn't even heard him.

She didn't know how long she sat, motionless, before her task; perhaps five times as long as her Master had waited, perhaps ten, or even twenty. It was without warning, though, without so much as a twitch from the object of her scrutiny, that her inclined head straightened, and she looked to the chair in which he originally had seated himself. Upon seeing it empty, she half-turned in her seat, facing the door, and waited with her hands folded in her lap for his return.

When the door finally slid open, he paused at the threshold, immediately taking note of her adjusted position, and raised one brow in prompt. She remained immobile, but on the table beside her, the soft vanes of the feather rippled in smooth waves as it fluidly gained altitude, rising perhaps a quarter meter from the surface of the desk. It pitched until it stood vertical midair, slipping to one side and then another, and then spun gracefully, first about its own rachis, and then with bowed barbs around some external point.

Its movement followed a peculiar, lilting rhythm until it became apparent that it was dancing. It followed a complex course, floating and weaving an intricate pattern in the empty air above the desk before it jerked as if it had slipped from her control, and began to drift naturally. Without so much as a change of her expression, the feather froze midair, caught and stilled by some unseen force. It remained immobile for several seconds, and then without warning it whistled through the air, ignoring updrafts that would otherwise cause it to linger aloft, and plummeted until it landed on the desk, acting for all the world as if an invisible hand had slammed it into the wood.

Ellie Reiker gazed up at her Master with enormous, guileless blue eyes, exhibiting no exultation beyond the soft, hopeful quirk that seemed to constantly linger at the corners of her lips, expecting only his adjudication. Her small, elegant hands discreetly wrung themselves as she awaited his verdict.

He stared at her without expression for what felt like a lifetime, and finally closed the door behind himself and took another step towards her. His face… it seemed like there was something more than neutrality there. She wanted it to be more. Perhaps that was why she saw it for a fleeting second: a touch of a self-satisfied smirk at one corner of his mouth, a warming in the unwavering intensity of his gaze, the barest lifting of his chin, all the subtle markers of pride.

He shifted only slightly to look to the feather and then back to her. Whatever she had thought she saw was gone, and his tone was cool in, "Pride is the mask of one's own faults. Take care that it is not your death mask."

She had no idea what he was talking about.

At her little moue of confusion, he elaborated, "I did not ask you to show off like a circusum magician."

Though there was no bite in his timbre, the words themselves caught her like a punch to the gut; caused her to go bright red, shrink in her chair, and hang her head with a stammered, "I- forgive me, Master." Her bottom lip was seized between her teeth, and her nails dug into the skin they grasped.

One of his enormous hands reached toward her without warning, and she flinched and froze before it landed gently on her crown. She dared not breathe. He said nothing, but the temperate twitch of his warm fingers shifting her hair told her he wasn't too terribly displeased. His mouth said one thing and his hands another. She wasn't sure which to listen to.

"Enough for today," he declared after too quick a moment of reassurance, withdrawing himself back up far out of her reach. "You will do something else for me tomorrow."

Swallowing carefully, she replied softly, "Of course, Master."

* * *

Supper had ended and she cleared and washed their plates. It had been her responsibility at home after morning and evening meals. She had done so with Doctor Trixie, and her master had said nothing regarding this (neither that it was expected or good, nor that it was unnecessary) and so she presumed that it was in all homes that children cleared dishes. She wasn't sure if this counted as a home, but it was what she had now.

She had never considered the possibility of a life beyond the Lacertus. Her parents and their parents had spent their entire lives on board the battleship; it was her family's home. She would never return there, though, and that family wasn't hers: not anymore; not after they surrendered her with such eagerness to whatever her fate would become.

Her sudden realization on the possibility of homelessness and foundlinghood gave her a queasy, uncertain sort of feeling that was assuaged only by her firm rationalization that an Admiral could ensure that his… whatever-she-was-to-her-new-master would have a place to sleep and not go hungry, and thus a Lord Inquisitor could as well.

When she had finished her chore, he called her back to the table and, at his gesture to do so, she sat immediately with her hands folded in her lap. There was another small bowl at her setting, filled with smooth little white dots. Intrigued, she looked to him for approval and then took a spoonful. It was impossibly cold and sweet, and as it melted in her mouth it became the consistency of thick cream. Cream had never sat well in her belly.

In an attempt to be as inoffensive as possible, she smiled with shy gratitude as she set her spoon down and swallowed, and then quietly asked to be excused from the table. One of his eyebrows lifted as his gaze flicked between her and the bowl, and at last nodded once.

She retreated to her room, bathed, and sat on her bed to comb her hair. Through the door she heard him speaking quietly; from the way he paused, it sounded like half of a conversation; whatever it regarded, he was faintly smug. "She didn't want anything to do with it." There was a pause and then, "Anything else?" After a moment he gave a faint snort and muttered, "I intend to." She had a nagging suspicion that he was talking about her.

He came in a few moments later and, presuming the unspoken directive that it was time for bed, she slid between her sheets. He flicked the switch for the light, leaving the door open, and sat on the edge of her cot in the single, thick beam shining in from the next room. The mattress (and her legs) sank toward him, and he regarded her a moment before the low rumble of his voice began. "I was at the Gates of Corinth during a typhoon, once…" She watched his face as she listened with rapt curiosity; his augmentic eye glowed warmly and his expression somehow gentled in the dimness.

He went on in detail to tell her about the monstrous Hrud he faced there with a squad of Imperial Fists at his back. He had been half blinded by the mud and smashed them left and right, describing the crunching noise of the impact from the gauntlet of his armor into their exoskeletons, and his shouting curses for a good thunder hammer. As he elaborated on grabbing one by its venomous mandibles and tearing them off to use both in stabbing it through the neck, he glanced down. While her face was still turned up to him with a soft, eager smile, her eyes had fallen shut and her breath came with slow, contented depth.

Expression inscrutable, he plucked the comb from her nerveless little fingers and set it aside before he stood and left, closing the door behind him silently.

* * *

It was a week later, and she sat before the same desk the feather had occupied. A routine had begun. After she cleared breakfast he would take her to the study, and give her a task: an object to move, a match to light, a six-sided cast die to manipulate. Unlike the first day, these were usually accomplished within a few moments, as if she had smashed down whatever barrier she'd encountered the first day and now needed only fine adjustment to achieve the goals he set.

Today it was a book: a heavy tome he wordlessly placed before her. She considered it, and then it rose some ten centimeters from the desk's surface. Her dark blue gaze then shifted to him for prompt.

"Open," he ordered, and the cover lifted and settled. "Higher." It tripled its height. "Turn ten pages." The only sound in the room was the rustle of the paper as it settled against itself, and then an enormous thud broke the silence as six pages through the task the book dropped, slamming into the wood, and she startled. Recovering quickly and without looking to him (she had learned the second day to fix the mistake as quickly as possible and without excuse), she resumed the exercise, completed it, and then peered up at him through her lashes.

He lifted one brow, canting his head by a matter of degrees, and instructed, "Impress me." Not having expected a need to improvise, she bit her lip. A little mark formed between her brows beneath her fringe. The pages flowed up, spread in a perfect arc, and held their formation for a moment. The book then flipped over, hard casing extended in a horizontal line but pages collecting in a vertical stripe. It bobbed at the binding while the covers beat up and down like wings.

The bird/book slowed its fluttering as if she had been seized by a sudden idea but not sure how to enact it. She paused; perhaps by habit, or reflecting the orderliness of her mind, the book slowly righted itself until it was closed, face up, hovering where she'd originally set it. At last, she closed her eyes in concentration and reached tentatively toward the tome. As her fingers inched forward, their tips grew a milky translucence.

Then they disappeared all together.

The effect spread to her wrist so that her whole hand was invisible; thus it was impossible to tell when it wrapped around the floating object. After a tense moment, the chameleoline effect traveled further up her arm, but it also spread over the book, until it appeared that the girl had nothing below the stump of an elbow extended over the wood of the table.

To confirm that what she had envisioned had come to pass, she opened her eyes and glanced down. Exhibiting visceral shock, she dropped the book, wrenching her hand back. Immediately both hand and book materialized and hit the desk as she panted, wide eyed, and wriggled her fingers to ensure they were still there. Reassured but not quite calmed, she lifted her face, slightly pink from exertion, to him; she exhibited not the triumphant excitement of one who had done well, but genuine humility and hope that this would be enough.

There was no doubt this time: his expression had clearly changed. His left brow had lifted, perhaps not so much as it did when she addressed him to ask a question, but certainly enough to cause a crease along his forehead. The right corner of his mouth had also turned up by a number of degrees, and, unlike the previous twitches she imagined having seen, it remained there for five full seconds.

The realization dawned upon her that _this_ was the expression that paired with the smugness she'd heard in his voice a week previously. _This_ was her new goal, the new driving force for her to not only succeed, but excel. There would be no cuddles; she was sure: no words of praise. _This_ ghost of an expression and _these_ five, transient seconds would be her reward for something he felt was exceptional. If she could coax that smug twist onto his mouth, he would keep her.

There was very little satisfaction in it – in something so muted and mundane for what had been truly hard, clever work; she was sure this, too, meant something. Many years later she would understand that gushing thanks and lauds and commendations were meaningless: the reward for hard, clever work was a continued existence that required it; she couldn't quite fathom that lesson yet. She only knew that it would have to be enough that once in every very long while, when she poured her soul into something and circumstances lined up just perfectly, he would almost smile at her.


	9. Chapter 9 The Litany

**Part 2 – The Black Brand**

Chapter 9 – The Litany

* * *

She was called the Litany of Flame, and Ellie knew at once that she was his. He had said nothing about a transfer, even when the titanic Oriens Ruboris had dropped from the warp back into real-space; but some hours later through a porthole, she had viewed the black-armored strike-cruiser with gold filigree and clean, crisp-angled lines slip by. From its decoration alone there could be little doubt.

It wasn't as if it mattered, really. She had nothing beside the feather to pack, and it slid without fuss into the pocket of her pinafore – _for luck_, she told herself. She could use as much as she could get. She was honestly eager to leave the Oriens. Despite the knowledge of its necessity, despite knowing it an honor of service, she couldn't quite help but think of the Black Ship as a death hold: a savage waiting room in which one wasted the balance of days between today and the day of one's judgment and submission before the Throne. It was no small wonder so many in the holds were mad.

He proceeded without warning to the docking bay with her trailing her customary pace behind and slightly to the right; she had learned this interfered least with his dealings and she still got the best vantage point for observation. He confirmed her suspicion regarding the Litany's custody when he boarded without even requesting permission. She admitted to herself that she knew very little about the Inquisition, but ships were something she did know, and she knew that regardless of rank or station, one did not simply waltz aboard a vessel of that class unless one literally owned the place.

His corresponding bay was a place of tightly-regimented industry. Each man and woman had taken immense care to be pressed and shined, and they all went about their tasks as if they were in a state of constant emergency and their future seconds depended on the regulated urgency with which they performed their duties. There was none of the customary bawling between deck hands over the progress of a job; conversations of necessity were held by staff in hurried hushes and the rest worked together as silent cogs in the greater machine. It seemed at once unnatural to her, having witnessed boarding areas firsthand all her life and having associated them with bustling chaos and at times indolence; and yet it was wholly logical that his ship would operate as it did.

A man met them just beyond the first airlock. That was to say, of course, that a man met _him_, as she wasn't spared a glance. The man, like her master, was completely bald, and he had a column of thin sutures running the length of his cranium just above his right brow. Below it, his eye had a milky sort of cast to it, and there was another scar running vertically at the corner of his mouth. Her first impression was one of dangerous dichotomy: that his particularly rough countenance and large, tough build directly contrasted with everything else about him.

Unlike her master, perpetually clad in power armor, this man was garbed in what was undoubtedly the most impeccably appointed suit she had ever seen, and his hands were clasped behind his back, chin raised, as if he had been waiting with pride to handle this meeting. There was, she noted, a particular warmth to the smile that seemed perpetually plastered to the corners of his mouth; she was sure that though he conducted all of his interactions with a show of pleasantry, this was one he actually anticipated with eagerness. She could hear the laughter sublimated just at the edge of his voice when he queried, "Found something you like, Pieter?"

This certainly caught her attention: she'd never heard anyone address her master as anything but 'my lord,' and she inspected the Inquisitor's face (in profile as she could), searching for the same spasm of outrage that had met her bungling question about psyniscience. To her fascination, not only did it not appear, but her master replied with a neutrality that spoke directly to a good-natured ease on his part, "Promising, Michael. Something promising."

The new man seemed to find this answer delightful and proceeded to succinctly assure her master that nothing requiring his urgent attention had occurred in his absence, and all routine affairs were on his desk (toward which, she supposed, they were now headed). Her cobalt spinel eyes were everywhere, carefully writing to memory the path they took, where the passages branched and intersected; she was fascinated by the servitor drone fixing some sort of wiring behind the a blackened steel panel; she quirked her head when a gaggle of officers came to attention and pressed themselves to the walls to allow them through. At the corner of her awareness, she heard the man, Michael, query, "Shall I see to the room Miss Ve-"

"No," her master cut him off, "that isn't yet necessary."

If this surprised the man, he certainly didn't show it. He only nodded with that permanent smile and continued his pleasant brief before stopping in front of a door which looked no different than dozens of others they had passed in this corridor. "I'll just leave you here to get settled, then," the man offered.

"I'll contact you with more specifics in the morning," her master told the man.

He, in return, bowed in a way that made Ellie at once sure that he was joking about it, an idea supported by his near-flippant reply of, "I live but to serve, My Lord Inquisitor."

Her master opened the door, using it for a tactical withdrawal from the smiling man. The area that lay behind it was… less than promising. While she was in no way accustomed to (nor ever truly desired) opulence in any degree, there was a Spartan emptiness to the space, a mute testament to a joyless, drab existence in which a home was only a place to regroup before returning to a life whose central focus, whose ultimate orientation, was work.

Her mother had filled their quarters with little knick-knacks that made things cozier – her father had called it clutter. There was no clutter in the kitchenette, all shining steel surfaces; on the desk with its orderly, full inbox; on the sofa that looked like it was rarely sat upon – she saw a few doors leading, she supposed, to an equally sparse bedroom and bath, but there was very little to inspire any confidence that her master had a gentler side.

Quite to the contrary, the sole source of the room's decoration was an assortment of inhuman heads, mounted to the wall like a series of bizarre, terrifying trophies that held court over the proceedings of the room. Their ghastly visages stared into her, immediately absorbing her attention, souring her stomach, like an arachnophobic unable to look away from the corpse of a tarantula for fear that it will begin to move. Indeed, she had taken two steps into the room and frozen, trembling, barely breathing, wide eyes locked with the glittering glass filling empty, taxidermed sockets.

He, conversely, had walked across the room with no notice taken of the décor, and approached a door. "You will st-" he began to rumble, and then cut himself off, realizing she was no longer at his side. Turning back, he quickly scanned his previous path to zero in on her, then followed her line of sight to the mounted trophies. And then he laughed a dry, short little chuckle, and a memory of a smile ghosted across his mouth, gone before her brain had time to register it, because it was that noise that broke the spell which had ensnared her.

She had thought laughter something he would look down upon, and certainly not in his repertoire. She bolted across the room to his side and her hand landed on the leg of his armor like he was home base in one of the games she had played with the other children. She was safe only so long as she remained in contact. Still visibly shaken, her eyes sought his and she whispered a tremulous, "Oh, Master, they're _horrid_."

He gazed down at her evenly for a long moment and finally related with some weight, "Which is why I killed them."

* * *

The room behind the door hadn't been like the room she'd kept on the Oriens, nor like the nursery on the Lacertus; he called it the meditation chamber, and it was where she would be staying. The room was large – almost the size of the living area they'd come from; there were routinely spaced columns and devotional scripts lining every surface. While this was obviously not a bedroom, nor (she was sure) would it be private, there was a mat and blanket off between a set of columns. She was again not to leave his quarters without him, and she really didn't want to go back out to spend time with those awful heads, so here she would remain.

A sense of calm permeated the room. Her cell in solitary had stifled all connection to the warp, and there was a sort of stuffiness to that feeling, like she'd been bereft of her sense of smell or taste. This room didn't stifle, but it controlled the flow of the ambient energy. It was… _comfortable_.

Her first order of business when he left, instructing her not to wander, was to pull the pallet into a corner. Ever since the dreams had begun the best sleep had come wed to the reassuring presence of a wall against her back.

Her second was to read the scripts posted to any surface she could crane her neck and squint to see; if she filled her brain with enough holy things, she thought, perhaps she could scrub out those terrifying faces that lurked out in his main quarters. She continued to read even after her mind went mostly numb, absorbing the calm and sanctity of this new haven until she drifted off.

The next day this undertaking proved useless, as he took her, planting her squarely in front of one of the half-dozen heads, and began telling her about it; he then went down the row, the Vespid Stingwing, the Carnodon, the Zoat, the Krootox, the Enoulian Assassin, the less-than-half-transformed Simulacra: he spoke at length about where they'd been found, how they'd been killed, their races' affiliations, strengths, exploitable weaknesses. He inundated her with information before breakfast, and after he tested her on all of it.

The rest of the day followed that same sort of pattern. He would flood her with more advanced lessons than she'd ever had: math, grammar and vocabulary, science, history, religion, High Gothic, the Inquisition, classifications of xenos, whatever he saw fit. He would distract her with something: meditation, a meal, a nap, a walk through the gangways, a psychic goal to achieve. He would finally test her; after dinner the test was cumulative for the day. Her hand was unbearably cramped from having written more than she had on any other day of her life, and he said nothing. She supposed she must have passed.

The successive days were much the same; he pushed her ever harder, testing the limits of her retention. She felt she learned more in five days with him than she had in the past two years in school.

She loved it.

True, he set the pace with her fighting to keep to it, but there were no other children to hold her back, no need to linger on things she understood; the lessons built on one another, borrowed lessons from each other's curriculums. She slept like an exhausted baby every night: deeply, dreamlessly; and each morning she woke refreshed and hungry and desperate to quirk the corner of his mouth and raise his brow for a full five seconds.

* * *

_News from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist_

_Well, folks, there's one more chapter in Part 2 and then we'll be taking a break while I bang out our M interlude, probably irreverently titled "Whatever Happened To That Hot Floozy Doctor?" or something like that.  
_

_I want to apologize that I didn't get this up sooner: there's this awful ear/throat infection thing getting passed around in my neck of the woods and I was out of commission for longer than I would have liked.  
_

_I also want to **deeply** thank everyone who's taken the time to review. I honestly try to respond to everyone I can, so if you're a guest, sign up! It's free, your reviews will automatically load instead of me having to approve them, you'll get notifications every time I update, and best, I'll be able to PM you and maybe leak a hint/spoiler or two.  
_

_Thanks again for reading!  
_


	10. Chapter 10 The First Death

_Alrighty, folks - I'm sorry this took so long to get up! I was hoping to h_ave _it done before I took a five hour drive to spend a weekend doing bridesmaid-ey things, but here it is. Next time will be an interlude and a whole new story thread so be sure to look for it!_

* * *

**Part 2 – The Black Brand**

Chapter 10 – The First Death

She had noticed absolutely nothing different about this morning, and she wondered with rapid, terrified honesty, if that was what had gotten her into this situation.

As was typical, her body had woken her four bells into the morning watch and she had stolen across the hall to the head, avoiding the gaze of her master's trophies. After, she had returned to the meditation chamber, made her bed, and prayed. Her first lesson (particularly difficult addition of fractions) was at six bells and her first test at eight. She was sure she passed, though; that couldn't have been the reason.

The Litany of Flame's Seneschal, Michael Corrigan, had come to the door just after breakfast as she struggled to read some basic religious text printed in High Gothic. Her (and in a way, she supposed, his own) master, the Inquisitor Lord Pieter Mordekai had held him in quiet conversation for half an hour, and she increasingly suspected that this was more because they were friends than for the business of running the ship. The Seneschal didn't visit every day, but it wasn't uncommon; he would rap at the door, enter smiling, they would converse, and the Seneschal would leave. That couldn't have been it, either.

She ran through a list of external factors, but they, too, were inculpable (and would have been illogical as catalysts themselves). The warp drives hadn't disengaged, nor had they experienced any turbulence. No notification of enemy presence or threat had come through. There had been no ship-wide announcement of a drill or change in scheduled proceedings.

He'd acted no different during meditation. Her master hadn't broken from their routine, and so far as she could tell, she'd done nothing to displease him.

And yet here she was, alone in the Litany's training area, emptied of equipment to resemble an arena more than anything. Here she was in her pinafore and spats, staring across a too-short and far too barren distance at an adult grox. Here she was, armed with nothing more than a fixed-blade knife the length of her inner forearm; her master had pushed her through the door and tossed the knife in after her, sending it clattering across the floor to land somewhere near her boot.

While she was sure that she'd actively done nothing to frighten or threaten the animal, it was clearly agitated, breathing as fast as she was, tossing its head and growling a terrible, bestial noise of warning. Confused and more than a little nervous about the creature across the room, she turned her head back, hoping to see her master waiting for her. The door was closed with a crimson locking light at its panel; it wouldn't open unless she had a code.

This lack of regard on her part apparently didn't sit well with the grox, and it let out a tooth-rattling bellow, stepping toward her and raising its spiked tail like a scorpion might.

That got her attention.

A sickening realization crept over her that her master wouldn't be coming to protect her. No one would be. And while she didn't want to be near this animal any more than it seemed to want to be near her, walking away was apparently not an option. He had left her that knife so she could protect herself from this beast. Taking a deep breath and not removing her eyes from the threat and using slow, nonthreatening motions, she crouched low and patted around the ground until her fingers finally found and wrapped around the knife's hilt.

The reciprocation of nonviolent intent ended that second, and though she was equally slowly, carefully standing back up, it scraped its forefoot once and charged at her. While she'd been told once in class that grox were aggressive and dangerous, she hadn't understood why it mattered until the spiked, scaly head had slammed into her, too slow to get out of the way, and rammed her in the thigh, causing a sick, heavy crack to emanate from the leg and blinding pain to shoot up into her brain, forcing a scream from her to split the air. It had seemed to charge _through_ her, not stopping until it hit the wall and roared again. She used its distraction as an opportunity to reach inwards – she had done it once before, and instead of hindering her, the panic stopped her from thinking of the details of _how_ and she simply _did_ – and caused herself to vanish: all of her, all at once.

Every step away from where she'd been standing was excruciating and she bit her lip until it bled, focusing desperately on remaining out of its sight. She headed towards the corner of the room to make herself small and unnoticeable. If she could just remain invisible for long enough it might forget her and she could leave without them hurting each other – well, any more than it already had. But she held no grudge for that – it was just an animal, it didn't know any better. She had no reason to want to hurt it. She didn't want to hurt anything. (Wasn't that why she was here? So that he could teach her to be safe?) She just wanted it to leave her alone.

Thinking, she realized, was a distraction. Part of her must have slipped back into the realm of visibility, because the animal behind her let out an outraged cry and charged at her unprotected back. Steeling herself, she continued on at her pace until the very last possible second and twisted her body out of its way just slightly, ending up on its side, encasing it to the wall, just before its foreleg. In a sort of desperation, realizing her options were quickly disappearing, she laid a gentle hand on the beast's shoulder, and whispered to it, "Please – calm down… don't make me –" but whatever else she could have said was cut off as its tail swung around and lashed into her unprotected side.

It knocked all the wind from her and her ribs were with lancing agony and the world slowed. She reached inside, again heedless of _how_ and simply _did_, and this time it guided her arm, showing her the exact spot to aim. The knife connected to a soft spot just behind and beneath its wide jaw, and sunk in like it would with butter. A river of red washed over the whole of her arm and the hem of her dress and the sheen of her boots and the beast stilled. She yanked the blade back out and more red splashed the floor and the animal quivered and crumpled and lay gasping in a heap. She could see its shuddering. There was a roar of white noise in her ears but it wasn't quite enough to drown out the sound of its few seconds of panicked, dying whines.

Mechanically, she wiped the blood off the blade with her skirt and sat at the crook of its neck, one leg tucked beside her and the broken one splayed out to the side. Her blood-soaked little hand touched its jaw and the beast's movement ended completely. The enormity of this slammed into her – she had killed it. It was gone. It would never roar or charge or breathe or eat again. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't wanted to.

She'd never hurt anything on purpose before. She didn't like it. But this had been his idea. This was what he was going to be encouraging of her for the rest of her life. It was going to make her more of a monster than she ever would have been without him. But monsters were what the Imperium needed – so she would do it. The shock seemed to be wearing off, because another wave of dizzying, sickening pain washed over her. She was fairly sure – about as sure as she'd been about making the feather move - that she could make the pain stop, but she wouldn't.

Getting hurt had been incidental in this: her own fault for not taking this seriously enough. If he wanted her fixed, he would do it himself, but he probably thought she deserved it. She certainly did, though perhaps not for the same reason. The pain would remind her that a soft heart would get her killed. Part of her – the part that feared and hated him for orchestrating this – thought that might be better for her soul, but she refused to be wasteful. The greater part of her knew he made her do nothing – and that was certainly worse.

The door behind her slid open and she slowly stood, her body screaming in torment, but she walked to the exit like a wounded automaton. She could feel his eyes on her. She could _feel_ his approval. _LOOK!_ Her mind shouted it at her. _He'll be smiling now. You were so desperate for that. Look now, and it'll be there. You'll see. _But it hardly seemed to matter anymore. It hardly seemed worth the cost. She followed him down the hall, wherever he was leading her.

The white walls of the infirmary gleamed, and someone picked her up and set her on the bench. They pricked and pinched and prodded her, but she hardly felt it, and soon there were drugs for pain, coursing through her veins, beckoning her down into a dark sleep. Just before she succumbed, she heard his voice, quite near, rumbling, "Finally, you are ready, my apprentice." She felt a warm weight on her forehead and then blissful, blessed nothingness.

* * *

_JustMe: I take absolutely no offense. Believe me, I know Ellie is over the top (and in game she's overpowered as all heck). I hope this gives you a fairly good indication of what life is going to have in store for our girl - all of that "almost too good"-ness is something she's going to need. Nothing is going to be easy. _

_Sir Rawk: So... heart warming, you say...  
_

_All the best,  
_

_-Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist  
_


	11. Chapter 11 Sanctioned

**Part 3 – The Shadowed Council**

Chapter 11 – Sanctioned

* * *

She woke to blinding white and disjointed thought. The world was a blur, and it didn't move in sync with her head as she blinked blearily, searching with minute movements for a clue as to where she was. With everything fuzzy, she couldn't quite pick up on detail, couldn't discern where she'd woken, couldn't fathom how much time had passed. This was unacceptable. She had an instinctive drive to stand _right now_: now that she wasn't sure if she was safe.

Would she ever truly be safe again?

Now, one does not naturally think _move, legs_, or _lift, torso_, but instead, _get up, now_; and while her body knew which steps to take to follow that order, it didn't seem to be able to comply. Her hand groped blindly for something to push off of, but it felt numb and distant. It felt like lead, like her body was a powered-down shuttle and she its machine spirit, desirous to move, to serve, but incapable. She could barely pivot her head.

Weak: she was so very weak.

'_Weak… subhuman… monster_…' It was that nasty little voice in the back of her head, the part that whispered insidiously, that slung at her all the terrible things she imagined someone like her father would say if he knew what she was thinking. And oh, was it right. _Monstrous_ for the abomination she was born as; for the obvious falsehood of her piety if it couldn't heal the taint she carried; that she believed that she could serve well enough to counteract the sin of her existence; that she could _stab_ something in the _throat_ and watch with satisfaction as it bled out on her.

The blood – her dress – she looked down stiffly to confirm that it was soaked like she remembered, that it hadn't been some mad dream, but moving made her as woozy as the guilt welling up in her belly did. Her dress was gone, and she was covered with a white sheet. Like everything had been washed clean. Like she was somehow innocent again. '_Never again_.' She knew it was right. She winced, closing her eyes tightly against nausea; her chin fell to her shoulder, jaw clenched, knees curling up, fingers in fists. '_Don't cry_,' that awful mockery of a conscience hissed spitefully, '_**he'll**__ take it worse than Dad ever did_.'

**Him**_**…**_ how had he ever become so important to her? She had let him and his whim rule her world without ever asking what right he had. He pushed her to exhaustion, he confused and terrified her, he barely _ever_ found her satisfactory enough to even smile, he never hinted verbal approval, he didn't care one bit about her. He locked her into a room with some crazed animal and left her to die. '_No_.' No that wasn't completely true. He had saved her from the Oriens and certain death, he had kept her warm and fed, he had taught her things she would've taken half a lifetime to learn, he had given her a purpose.

He had left her a _knife_ and _no choice_. She wanted to hate him for that; but she couldn't. That hate wasn't meant for him. '**_He _**_wasn't the one whose hand got sticky with hot red syrup jettisoning a body that would never breathe again_.' That was all hers.

Killing had been… wrong – it was… right – it was… permanent – it didn't matter. It saved her life. It wasn't worth the cost – she would have _despised_ anyone covered in blood like she'd been. It was too much to cope with – but she'd done it – if she could go back and change it she would – she would have wasted a resource – it was too late, now, anyway. And she'd have to do it again. She thought with resignation that she'd learn to enjoy it. _That_ thought alarmed her. _That_… that was something she couldn't live with.

Something new was growing in her. Its seed had been planted when the knife connected with her victim and fell on the fertile soil of her guilt. It had lain dormant as she slept and healed, but it could no longer be denied. It began as queasiness in her gut, a signal that all was not right with the world. _Nothing_ was right with the world. It spread into her chest as a tightness that robbed her of breath. It was a feeling first. And somehow that feeling told her everything she needed to know. She was not – she would never be – _good_. Regardless of how badly she wanted it, there was nothing she could say or do or believe that could redeem her. There would always be the darkness in that corner of her mind, hiding in her skin, ready to hurt anything that got in its way.

She… hated herself.

Ellie Reiker _loathed _herself.

Despite her best effort, huge sobs began to wrack her as sharp little nails dug into her upper arms, desperately both hugging and flaying. There was nowhere to turn for comfort – no mother to hold her, no Doctor Trixie to soothe her, no father to brace her; she wanted to claw the monster out so she could be a little girl again. She wanted to be safe. She let herself cry until the count of five and then she sniffed hard, biting her lip, and she allowed that physical pain to guide her back. She still wasn't sure where she was, and this was something that one did in private. It wouldn't do to be seen like this.

"Giselle."

He had never called her by name before, and every part of her stiffened in reply, not daring to breathe, her mind an alarm of '_He knows_.' She heard it in his tone. Had he… seen? It didn't matter. Her face was red and her nose running and her eyes puffy from her sobs. He was moving over to her. Was he… angry? She couldn't tell, but she felt guilty – as if she had sinned against him with her moment of weakness. Would he make her regret it? Her mind froze with the terrifying thought: would he send her away?

She heard him over her, and she tensed. He grasped her chin, turning her face to him, her cheeks burning with disgrace. She could've wept again from it. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes. It didn't help – she couldn't read the expression with which he regarded her, but seeing him made her heart race with wild panic. He inspected her for a long moment, and she felt more tears building.

"Peace," he bade her in the gentlest voice he'd ever used.

…Where was the wrath? What happened to the harsh, barked words that came after displays of weakness like that? When would the blow for getting caught at it fall? She searched his face for the anger behind his mask of neutrality, but found nothing. She didn't understand this at all.

With extreme care, she wet her lips – how _dry_ that pain medicine had made her mouth – and after careful consideration of what would least incite him, asked, "Where-?" Her voice cracked as she attempted to look around the room, but he guided her face back to him. His eyes met hers, vivid color in stark contrast to everything else in her world. She was drowning in them.

He entered her mind like a knife, a surgical gouge in the fabric of a consciousness swollen with doubt, all at once blinding pain and blistering relief. She could feel _him_, his awareness, his very soul, taking up space within her, pressing what had once been a tightly knit whole of her to pieces to make room for himself. His mind was vast, more than she could ever have expected it to be, lifetimes of knowledge and faith and pain breaking new ground within her and tossing up her ordered self into a haze of dusty debris. He caught a mote of her thought before it settled, holding it to the light to inspect it, and she _felt_ as much as heard his reply, "I will make you safe. I will order your soul. I will Sanction you –" he pulled something from her memory: Doctor Trixie holding her, 'The only human life of any worth…', "– so that you may serve."

Sanctioning… she hadn't ever anticipated the process to be like this. She hadn't known what to expect at all. If she could have guessed, it wouldn't have been anything so… intimate. Everything that made him _him_ was in her, his thoughts sliding against hers as he sought out things she would have never uttered, things she would have never shared, finding _her_, even the parts that she hid away to protect. And there was so much to that mental presence, so many impenetrable layers that took stock and measure of a cramped space without yielding to its obvious restrictions. It was dizzying.

She put her hand to her forehead, trying to ease the ache, and her breath hitched. Moderate pain was beginning to radiate from the area near where she processed smell. There was so much ozone. Biting her lower lip, she murmured, "You're... very big, Master." There was no use cringing away from him – even as her first instinct caused her to pull away and hide, his mind followed hers – continued to follow hers, no matter how deep she retreated. "This is... overwhelming." What she really meant was frightening.

He moved her hand away, back to meet its mate on her belly, and quieted her, though there was nothing dangerous in his tone. She could feel no anger coming from him, only concentration. He was moving inside her mind, exploring, leaving nothing untouched, nothing secret, nothing her own anymore. He was scouring her soul, seeking out traces of instability, of susceptibility, of insanity and corruption. He was testing her limits, delving deep, cracking through any paltry defenses and spreading her awareness, her personality, her most sacred beliefs open to vivisect. He wasn't particularly gentle about it, and she wondered briefly if one could be with something like this.

As if responding to her very thoughts, the hand at her jaw moved to her forehead, almost comforting, his thumb moving firmly at her temple. It was balm for the expanding pressure. His voice was still deep and gravelly, but quiet and there was a warmth in it she had never heard before as he gentled her, "Hush, now." Her heart gave a nervous tremor but he assured, "You're doing well, my girl."

This, of course, did not stop him from stampeding around her brain like her grox had throughout the training room. '_The grox__…'_ the horrid little voice brought forward those memories, but they weren't what he latched on to. No, he brushed those aside and followed that voice back to where it lived, just on the edge of the dark corner, watching. He said nothing, but somehow she heard him as he identified it with a passing thought: **self-criticism**. And then he burst it open into an untold trillion pieces. He reformed it, but not with all of those motes. Criticism, it seemed, she could keep. Doubt she could not. The thought washed directly from his mind and she at once understood: it was a weakness she couldn't afford. He swept it away and left nothing in its wake but a pocket of space like a flesh scrape that would eventually close in on itself.

It was then that his attention turned to the dark corner. Half dream and half awake, she could see him approaching it; he took steps into the darkness, shadowed, and approached _The Well _with something almost like curiosity. He reached down and filled his hand with the dust of her memory there, inspecting it. She was four, with her mother in the nursery, reading a story with a wishing well. She turned the page. There was the picture of it, mason-stoned, beamed, and thatch-roofed, glowing with merry promise. The memory faded, leaving a dingy grey replicate of it, pouring forth darkness and chaos instead of light. He examined the bucket, suspended and swinging ominously, and then another handful of memory.

She was in the small workroom, staring at the feather, but all of her thought was turned inward. He seemed to have no trouble following the memory's thoughts: to make the feather move, she needed to use the power. She only used the power when she was asleep, and had no idea how to harness it when awake. But she remembered the dreams, and she followed those memories back to the dark corner. She explored it, fighting down the fear.

It went on forever.

It opened into something that was not her mind.

**The Warp**_._ Even from within the memory she heard his thought. He watched on as she traced back to the edge of the darkness, unsure how to harness the energy she needed, but not invite the darkness in. She stared, and then concentrated, erecting heavy slabs of stone wall and floor to create a barrier, blocking it out. Then she built her well and its bucket, and opened the floor beneath it. She let the bucket down, down, down, and then drew it back up, full to the brim with the Immaterial energy she could use. _Yes_, her original thought echoed, _this will work_.

She fought her way back up to the surface, to the present to see him, staring down at her and still without expression. _'Not good enough,'_ the little voice hissed, and she knew it was right. There wasn't even a twitch to the corner of his mouth. She opened her parched lips to apologize, but his fingers covered them, stopping the sound. He knew the content of her heart now: he knew what she would say. He didn't care to hear it. There was no censure in that, though – his mind still cradled within hers, she could feel that, at least. He only cared to fix it.

He turned back to the dark corner, and this time _he_ began construction.

It took a long time. She couldn't even be sure how long. She barely felt her body, and it gave her no signifiers, no hunger or exhaustion by which to judge the passage of time. There was only the sensation of him building and planting within her. He was everywhere, installing reflexes, barriers, defenses, coaching her back into his order after he'd broken her own down. She wasn't sure what it was that he was changing in her, what he'd programmed her to do at what prompts, but she implicitly trusted it was to better serve.

There was something so familiar with what he built in that corner of her mind. When he stood back within her mental scape to inspect it, she did as well. It was… like a ship. He'd made a series of airlocks, of docking ports, of emergency bulkheads that would slam shut to seal off this area from the rest of her mind if something that shouldn't got in. He made protocols for them.

There was a docking bay for using her power that could be opened when awake. Within, there was a port for moving things, a port for disappearing, a port for setting a match to burn, ports that she couldn't identify, or perhaps were reserved for things that she would learn later. Then there was a bay that would open when asleep, locking the other one down. She wasn't sure where it led, nor was she tired, but she knew she would find out later, and didn't fear that she'd set her bed on fire from a nightmare.

This was much better than her alternative.

Her hand fluttered up from its mate to touch his, still lingering at her cheek after who knew how much time had passed. She nuzzled into it, smiling shyly, and whispered, "Thank you, Master."

He raised one brow, but beyond that gave no reply. For a long moment it felt that he was merely staring down at her, and then a fingertip from his second hand traced the exposed section of her neck. "Here, I think," his voice rumbled as the finger stopped low on her throat, a few centimeters above her collar bone, having traced a straight line from the left corner of her jaw.

"There?" She searched his face, confused. "What's there?"

There was the ghost of a smile that passed almost before she saw it, and he replied, "Nothing. Yet."

* * *

_A note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist:_

_Well, my dears, I'm back, after several weeks of fairly awful bronchitis (I'm still not completely well yet). So! Since it's been a while, important things to note: _

_Chapter 2 of that M interlude I talked about is up. Some of you may not know this, but there's an automatic rating filter on the list of recently updated stories, so the best way to find **Burning Bridges** is to link to my profile and find it there. If you want something fun and considerably lighter, go check it out.  
_

_In the author's note of that interlude, I mentioned that my sort of co-author-ish/sometimes-beta-reading guy has finally found his way onto fanfiction, so TurnoftheSoul is awesome. 'Nuff said.  
_

_ Just Me: I don't know if you can see author profiles, but I mention there that I truly believe in constructive criticism. Unless you're flaming, I won't see flames. In my "defense," I had planned to slow the pace down and have our girl evaluate what happened in Chapter 10 here (though perhaps not so much before you said something), because in Chapter 10 I wanted to convey the dissociated thinking that accompanies shock. You've also made me realize that I've designed Ellie to have an intuitive mental process (not all my characters do), which is to say that the collection and collation of data happens almost instantaneously, leaving a feeling or realization in its wake without the thinker being completely conscious of what led to it. Because I myself am an intuitive thinker (I'm talking personality theory, not ESP), these leaps you mention are only natural. I've done what I could to try rationalizing. Let me know how it turned out.  
_

_ Someone Took My Name: Thanks for essentially getting my butt in gear. As that you're writing your boy's story, I don't think I'll be borrowing him, but it spurred an interesting thought that'll happen later in this section, and I'll definitely credit you as inspiration.  
_

_The rest of you: Enjoy, and REVIEW! I can't tell you how much it makes my day when I get a little email that says I have a new review.  
_

_Getting a tattoo at six years old and more wacky adventures in the Tricorn Palace next time on **Of Worth**!  
_

_-G  
_


	12. Chapter 12 White Light

****_A Note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist:_

_Well, kids, here we finally are at Chapter 12, now that Burning Bridges with Doctor Trixie is all wrapped up.  
_

_Things you have to thank for this update: Hurricane Sandy, propane lanterns, old notebooks, and Butterscotch Schnapps. I'm from the Jersey shore, and we got humped pretty hard over here. If you've got a minute, go ahead and google images "Seaside Hurricane Sandy" - there's a roller coaster in the ocean six miles from my place. I was really lucky: I couldn't get off my street for two days because there were trees at both ends and flooding on one; my neighbor's tree is leaning up against my shed and our yard is filled with branches, but we didn't sustain any damage. I was without power a week, so even though this has been written, there's been no way to get it to you until my cable came back today. I put it up on my facebook and I'll put it up here: if you come across bins for blankets, coats, canned food, etc for disaster victims, please avail yourselves of them: it's turned awful cold. We've got another Nor'easter headed our way and some people I know have lost **everything**.  
_

_The good news is that without power at home or work, I literally had nothing to do but sit and write (and clean up my property, which was an enormous pain in the butt). Getting back into the swing of writing, so keep an eye out for more sometime soon (or appease my ego and add me to your author watch list so you get told when I put anything up).  
_

_Enjoy, make my day with a review, and see you soon!  
_

_-Geist  
_

**Part 3 – The Shadowed Council**

Chapter 12 – White Light

* * *

"Master?"

He had turned away from her and she could tell by the shifting of his shoulders that his hands were busy with something. He half-canted his head toward her to indicate she had his attention.

She took a breath and made sure that her voice didn't sound demanding or outraged that he'd dosed her with some unidentified thing. In the infirmary, she'd heard those qualities in a man hysterical with panic and pain when an intern doped him to work on his chest, pierced through by rebar. Doctor Trixie had explained what each shot or pill had been for: she'd said people feel more comfortable when they know what's happening to them. Her master probably didn't know much about making people comfortable. No, instead she composed her voice into the curiosity he found – not pleasant, she was sure – but not unduly pestersome, and queried carefully about what he'd injected into her neck, in exactly the same place he'd touched just a few moments ago. "What was that?"

"Localized anesthetic," he replied shortly; it sounded like she should have known that.

She had no idea what it meant.

He must've understood from her silence. She rather hoped he would explain without her confirming that she was the only person in all of the Imperium that didn't know. The silence grew maybe half a moment too long and then he clarified, "So you don't go mad from the pain." He said it as if going mad from pain was an ordinary occurrence, something that happened every third Tuesday and certainly nothing to be concerned about.

It was, indeed, his casual dismissal of this possible outcome that caused her to query without fear, "Pain, Master?"

He faced her, his whole body turning, and she spotted what he'd been tending. It was a ten-inch long bar of metal with a handle he currently gripped and an oddly-shaped symbol at the free end. Save the charred tip, the last few inches of the rod were an incandescent white, glowing so bright that the walls around her and her sheet seemed a dingy, mottled gray.

She'd seen metal that color a few times when servitors were spot-welding beams on catwalks and the like. Her father had said the metal glowed when it was hot enough to form together. If the poker in his hand was hot enough to melt other metal, what it would do to her skin…

He grasped her chin with one hand as a whimper escaped her and her eyes went wide, tracking the thing's progress toward her. "Stay very still," he instructed dispassionately. She searched his face frantically for a scrap of comfort – or mercy – but found neither. The white-hot tool was so close she could smell the metal. Her breaths came in terrified half-sobs, her pulse hammering in her throat where the needle had struck. _It's not happening_, she tried to tell herself. _He's going to stop and –_

Blinding fire was lancing through her and she was drowning, choking for air that didn't swamp her lungs with pain. She thought she may have wet herself. She'd lost control of her body – it was wrenching into a rictus of agony, all emanating from where metal met skin. The implement didn't just lay there. It was digging down, singeing and gouging the tender flesh.

"…divine light to protect me from the darkness…" the whispered words were coming unbidden to her lips as her mind slipped toward blessed, numb unconsciousness.

"Shh, no…" his free hand moved to her cheek again. "Stay with me."

She couldn't disobey. Not when he said something almost sweet softly like that. So she clawed her way back up to reality, where the stink of burning human flesh washed over her and forced out a cough and gag. Then the pain came again. Nothing – _nothing_ – could hurt this much. Her mind shied away from it, trying to deny it, to shut it out, but it was already inside her, festering, spreading…

She opened her mouth: perhaps screaming would alleviate the anguish. But nothing came out. It was trapped in her chest and she couldn't –

"Breathe," he urged so firmly, so gently. He met her eyes, and there was nothing but strength there: strength she could draw in. He dragged her back to the surface. He took slow, deep breaths. Her eyes drank in the flare of his nostrils, the steady rhythm of his chest, the pulse in the hollow just beneath his jaw. It wasn't even a conscious decision to mimic him.

Finally, after a lifetime, he pulled the branding tool back. It felt like it ripped away half the meat of her neck to leave the pipes of her throat exposed. They flexed instinctively.

She screamed then: high, loud, broken. She flinched away from his hand and curled in on herself, her body trembling and wracked with sobs, and nothing in all the Materium was balm enough to soothe her.

* * *

It was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard. The song echoed in her mind, where she'd retreated to escape the pain. So that it wouldn't drive her mad. Now it sounded like the complex, perfect harmony was calling to her, beckoning her, drifting in like the voices were in a hall just outside an open door. She followed because she was at once certain that nothing this perfect, this pure, could be dangerous. It led her to the bay he'd constructed; the place where she could draw power was sealed off, but the port that had been closed in consciousness was now open and blazing with the whitest, warmest light.

That was where the song was coming from.

She lingered at the door, listening, serenely smiling, and with a heart full to bursting took a timid step out. It was too bright to see anything. Now she was just a silent voice, one among untold thousands that joined in a harmony so complex, so completely balanced, that she irrevocably, unswervingly knew that this song and this light were sacred in a way she had no words to express.

She listened for a long time. It healed her and made her whole. She feared making a single sound, loathe to ruin this for even a second, but she couldn't dare remain silent when innumerable tongues swelled the chorus, amplifying and spreading it so that it would reach every corner of the universe. So she sang, the ancient words, the notes, the rhythm coming to her in some act of foresighted, divine providence.

She had no weight now beyond the lending of her voice to cast music and light out into the dark silence of space. She was part of this perfection, this flame, and whatever she'd done, for good or ill or neither at all, was forgotten.

* * *

Violet and augmentic red eyes had looked on as she sobbed herself to sleep, the hypno-doctrination taking hold and the words to the Litany of Protection escaping her just as consciousness faded. She repeated them time and again, her whispers stabilizing to the mellowness of her typical timbre after the raw tightness from screaming abated. There was a break in her murmurs – a hesitant silence before she joined the song of the Astronomicon, her little voice lifting, melting away the vestiges of pain and fear that crossed her brow and clenched her jaw.

He inspected the mark closely. The area around it was raw, red, raised – the brand itself was charred black. When it healed it would stand out in stark contrast to the snow of her skin. No one could contest its legitimacy.

With her soft vocalizations still drifting past the usual filter that inhibited sleeping speech, he rolled her into his arms, carrying her limp form to the door. His seneschal opened it and walked with him down the corridor.

"Shall I ready Miss Verda's old room aboard now?"

He nodded in response, continuing toward the suite he'd been assigned earlier, when they landed on Scintilla at the Tricorn Palace. As Michael turned to attend that task, the Lord Inquisitor stopped him with, "Send a churgeon to my rooms first."

The man's eyes lingered at the wound on the girl's neck before he replied, "Of course," and headed off.

In the solitude of his private space, his expression remained inscrutable as ever as he laid his apprentice (who'd curled into his chest as he carried her) on the small bed in the room adjoining his. He smoothed the sweat-dampened hair from her cheeks with a hand bigger than her entire head and covered her with a blanket. Though he stepped back, her tiny, heart-shaped face turned to him, the deep burn on her neck stretching and causing a paroxysm of a frown to cross her brow. He tipped her chin straight forward with a single finger, content in the knowledge that even in her sleep, she sought him out.

* * *

It had been two days since he'd Sanctioned and branded her. Two days during which she'd been interrupted or woken hourly as a churgeon changed and redressed the bandage on her neck that was fighting off possible infection. She was fairly certain there was something in the antiseptic cream that accelerated healing because it had by now been demoted from excruciating to agonizing, from agonizing to aching, and now from aching to annoying.

Now every time she shifted her head it felt like her skin was splitting open beneath the bandage and when she didn't move it itched like mad. It was like an alien, foreign… something under the skin of her neck and she wanted to scratch the entire thing out. Of course the first time she'd wriggled her fingers beneath the gauze to dig into the new mark, her Master shot her the glare of a lifetime and bit out an abrupt, "Don't." It had to heal. She knew it. It was just so distracting.

He'd told her that she was being given time to heal, to meditate and reflect on her Sanctioning, her mark, her place in the Imperium, her lifetime of service – to him, and the Throne – which had only just begun. But how could she if the only thing she could think about was alleviating the wretched tingle in her healing flesh?

It was the Seneschal who'd saved her from that conundrum. She'd been observant enough on the Litany of Flame to notice that Seneschal Corrigan had a rapport with every individual he passed (with the exception of her). It wasn't so much that he avoided her or distanced himself; what little he interacted with her had been distantly cordial, and she could have easily presumed he was a man not unlike her father in stiffness of policy were it not for his easy, almost jocular nature with every other soul aboard.

Instead, he had seemed to be waiting for some unspecified signal before he invested any time in cultivating her. Now so much had come to pass in such a short span of days that she couldn't be sure which of the hurdles she'd faced had caused his change of heart. Nevertheless, some few hours after the Lord Inquisitor had enacted his strict no-scratching policy, yet another churgeon came in to check the wound's progress, followed closely by the Seneschal.

"Good afternoon, Seneschal Corrigan," it was the dutifully polite greeting she'd offered (with some slight variation) at their every meeting.

Instead of returning it, as was his wont, he peered over the churgeon's shoulder and shrewdly mentioned, "That looks unpleasant," with the sort of distaste she'd seen on Merica's face when she bit into a sandwich with cheese that had turned.

"Itchy, sir," she corrected, digging her nails into her palms to avoid sinking them into the offending spot.

"Well that," he watched the Churgeon leave, then winked conspiratorially, "you can work around."

"Sir?"

"May I?" he extended one hand toward her neck, she presumed to demonstrate what he meant by 'work around.' At this point she was desperate; when she nodded, his hand connected firmly with the dressing and employed it to rub carefully at the healing flesh beneath.

She bit her lip and smiled with earnest gratitude as the itch abated, "Thank you, Seneschal Corrigan."

"Corr," he corrected absently.

Her brow creased. She had been calling him the same thing for weeks now. "Forgive me, I thought –"

"Just Corr," he specified with another wink of his milky eye.

She'd never been invited to use an adult's nickname and the thought of showing less than the utmost in respect didn't sit well with her. A shy corner of her mouth lifted, "It feels much better now."

"Practice, little one. A lifetime of experience teaches you all the tricks. This works the unguents deeper into the tissue and the abrasion from the bandage won't pull the scab." She wasn't quite sure why he was telling her this, but her searching expression cued him to expand, "You won't get yelled at because it doesn't break the rules."

They shared a grin for a long moment, and Ellie Reiker only then began to suspect that even if her master couldn't be convinced to smile, her life needn't be entirely empty of little happinesses.


	13. Chapter 13 The Quiet One

****_A note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist:_

_Well, my dears, here we are at Chapter 13. I'll freely admit that most of this has been written for more than two weeks, I just didn't have the inspiration to finish it and (as you can see in the disclaimer I put in my profile) I believe uninspired writing is boring garbage, so I'm not going to foist something half-assed on you. It's done and done right. That being said, I will literally fedex you cookies in exchange for constructive critiques. I keep seeing people adding this story to their favorites or their watch list, but I hardly get a peep from you! There is no piece of writing that doesn't have room for improvement, so tell me where I can make it.  
_

_Now, there's no guarantee that the next chapter will be up before the holidays; I want it to be, but I'm not going to make promises I can't keep. So if I don't see you before then, have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Crazy Kwanzaa, a Tip-top Tet, and a Solemn, Dignified Ramadan. (Hint for getting a nice update for your holiday of choice - reviews make me want to write more!)  
_

_Catch ya on the flip side,  
_

_-G_

* * *

**Part 3 – The Shadowed Council**

Chapter 13 – The Quiet One

* * *

It was black satin with tiny gold stitches, floating down to the floor where the fabric rustled like a whisper in an empty room. Her wide eyes absorbed the details at the hem and the cuffs of the elbow-length sleeves, the slim golden ribbon at the waist, and she summarily decided that the dress hanging on the back of her door was the prettiest she'd seen outside of a picture of a sector governor's daughter – or a princess in a book. It was the sort of beautiful thing she was afraid of touching for fear of ruining it.

But her Master had said to put it on and 'make herself presentable.' She wasn't quite sure what that meant, but she'd scrubbed her face harder than usual and brushed her hair while it was wet so it didn't turn into a poofy mess. Now that it had dried into soft curls, she pushed it back with a black band and slipped the dress over it.

It zipped up the side to encase her just right, and her little hands smoothed down the front; it was a gesture she'd seen her mother perform time and again, one she seemed to unconsciously mimic each time she dressed. She tied the ribbon in the front so that it would be pretty (she'd never quite gotten the knack for tying a bow in the back) and slid it around. She buckled the black shoes that sat to one side; they were cut from whatever material her father's formal shoes had been and reflected light like they were made of liquid.

As ready as she felt she'd ever be, she made her way to the suite's sitting room with a hopeful, appeasing sort of quirk to the corners of her mouth. His face rose from the data-lectern after a moment, and he scrutinized her as she threaded her fingers together so she wouldn't wring her hands. He came around to stand near her, he reached down, and carefully removed the bandage at her neck. By now the mark had almost stopped itching; that must've meant it was healed enough to go uncovered. He looked her over again and nodded once, rumbling, "Acceptable."

During the span of time that he'd assessed her, she returned the favor (discretely, of course). She'd never seen his power armor in anything less than pristine condition, but it seemed to have been cleaned, buffed, and polished until it shone like her shoes. His typical mantle had been replaced by one of quality comparable to, if not surpassing, her dress. She wasn't quite sure what else about him was different on this morning compared to any other – perhaps the set of his jaw – but she knew something was.

His enormous hand crushed the liniment-soaked gauze as he passed her to throw it away. "I will be attending the High Council of Inquisitor Lords today." That must have been why he had taken such care in his preparations. "You will be accompanying me." She had guessed as much from her new dress. It was, of course, in all probability because he had no one to babysit her until he got back; and that was alright. She'd just stay out of everyone's way, and –

His nose was all at once inches from hers; he towered over her, close enough to feel the heat of the exhalations from his flared nostrils. His expression was ominous. Her heart stopped a beat, mind scrambling to identify what she'd done to warrant that. "If you-" his timbre was dark, with the sort of clipped quality that she associated with over-enunciation, "-so much-" she knew his natural eye was violet, but at that moment she could have sworn it glowed with the same red fire as his augmentic, "-as _breathe_ incorrectly-" his face got even closer and she dared not move back even though her eyes couldn't focus at such a short range, "-I will dismantle you." His eyes narrowed and he near-whispered, "Atom by atom."

She swallowed carefully to ease the dry, tight constriction of terror in her throat, and then nodded. He seemed to accept the fear written in her huge eyes as an avowal of good behavior, and led the way out the door.

* * *

Perhaps she'd had preconceived notions about what a meeting of this High Council would entail. Her parents had brought her into an emergency meeting of shipboard line officers once, when they had no time to dump her somewhere else. She hadn't even gotten a warning about what would happen if she uttered a sound or – Throne forbid – sneeze or in any way call attention to herself and thus embarrass them. She knew: the consequences would be worse than anything she could have imagined at the time.

So when her parents had filed into the fluorescently lit board room to take a seat around the enormously long oval table, she'd wedged herself into the furthest, most unobtrusive corner she could find and made sure she didn't breathe too loudly. There had been a briefing and then a quick, orderly round of discussion and clarification before the meeting broke, officers leaving with deft purpose to attend whatever the topic had been. She supposed that she'd suspected all meetings would run that way.

The truth couldn't be further.

The first thing that struck her – and she found particularly odd – was that the place was rather dark. She'd been expecting the ultra-bright lights common in most administrative work areas onboard, but this was apparently not the sort of meeting at which one took written notes and assembled a plan of action to transmit to the masses. The room was easily the size of one of the Lacertus's cargo bays, with floors that rose around its perimeter like the seats in a stadium. On each of the levels there were rows of alcoves in even deeper shadow, making it near impossible to make out the figures that occupied them.

They were occupied, though. The sort of murmuring whisper of many hushed conversations filled the air. She wondered what the voices were talking about, to whom they belonged; she wondered how many of them knew her Master, if these were his friends, as so many of the other officers had been to her parents. She peered up at his face, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dimness, to try reading any hint of expression there in hope that it would answer her unspoken questions. His head was carried high, eyes focused on one particular alcove, shoulders and jaw set with an almost attractively self-composed, cold arrogance.

Four steps into the room, the whispers stopped – all of them, almost immediately dying down to silence that filled the space more than the conversations had. If he even noticed, he certainly didn't care. Almost as soon as he took a seat behind the desk in the alcove he'd mounted the steps to, the buzz of conversation redoubled. His head turned by less than ten degrees toward her; he met her eyes, attentive and zeroed on him alone, and then flicked his gaze to a spot just to his right. She took two careful steps to stand precisely where he'd looked, and then he faced straight forward.

After a few moments a voice announced in the darkness, "The High Council in the Tricorn Palace on Scintilla is called to order on this, the three-hundred-seventeenth day of the year forty-thousand, nine-hundred thirty-five; Tiberius Blackmoon, Inquisitorial High Lord of Terra, presiding." There was an almighty, synchronized scrape of dozens of chairs moving for their occupants (including her Master) to stand. She noticed movement across the room as someone entered, but with the distance and the shadow, she couldn't see. After a moment, the figure who had entered must have sat, because another mass of noise – the sort that has volume only because of the number of people making it – accompanied them sitting back down.

The meeting progressed systematically. The floor moderator followed a strict protocol to announce each speaker as: "Lord Inquisitor (whoever was taking the floor), (whichever Ordo or Conclave affiliation was applicable)," who would stand and move from the deep shadow into the dim light to speak. Most of what the other Inquisitor Lords were talking about went over her head. It seemed like they were updating each other on what they'd been up to. A few times other people would ask questions or make comments, make motions to take this or that action, but it hardly seemed like the hyper-focused productivity she'd witnessed on the Lacertus.

More interesting than the statements the other Inquisitor Lords were making was her Master's reaction to each of them. She found herself focusing on him alone, watching carefully for the hidden markers that told her his disposition toward the current speaker. She wasn't even sure what, specifically, she saw on his face that clued her – so far as she could tell, if his features shifted at all it was by the most miniscule of degrees. Yet she was certain she knew if he especially liked or disliked someone, if something bored or worried him. It led her to wonder if he was making himself transparent for her benefit, or if she'd just gotten better at reading him.

At last she heard the moderator call, "Lord Inquisitor Pieter Mordekai, Ordo Xenos," and her Master rose. When he stepped forward she found herself madly curious about what he would have to report compared to the others. In a manner, this was a measure of him against his peers; would he have accomplished more? Less? Would he be received well or barely tolerated?

His report didn't meander as much as many others: he tersely related that the Cult of the Redeemer had been exterminated. As he gave pertinent details, she found herself wondering how that had happened, if he had done the exterminating all by himself or if he'd had help, if the cult had been on one planet or spread across a system; she didn't understand much about cults but so far as she could glean, they were bad things, indeed. He went on to inform this council that three planets in the Helican Sub-sector had fallen in short order to a new Ork Waugh, and his recommendation was nothing less than a full crusade mobilization. Regarding Orks, she only knew what she'd learned in the few books he'd had her read: they were fierce, awful things that destroyed everything in their paths, more often than not on principle alone.

From his inflection, she thought that he had finished; and so it startled her when he looked down at her and rumbled, "I have Sanctioned and taken an apprentice," with an inflection that said he was staking a claim or announcing ownership. She tried to make sure her expression didn't convey complete surprise.

She stood very still with her back straight and her fingers laced together, the sensation of dozens of sets of eyes inspecting her making her madly nervous. She worked hard to ensure her features remained as they had been before he called attention to her: faintest hint of a smile, chin high, focused only on him. She hoped it was working. He hadn't told her he'd be pointing her out. This room full of sudden scrutiny made her skin crawl and she wanted to hide behind him so that she couldn't do anything embarrassing; but that itself would be an embarrassment. If she even so much as breathed wrong he'd tear her apart. She didn't dare move.

Silence met the announcement, followed by the moderator's acknowledgement of someone's desire to discuss this news. "Lord Inquisitor Mantara Suzaku, Calixian Conclave." Ellie didn't know if she should look at the new speaker or stay focused on him; he, however, was staring down whoever had stepped forward, and she found his reaction too interesting to turn away from.

"You seem to be making a habit of this, Lord Inquisitor Mordekai." It was a woman's voice, in the higher register and accented in a way she'd only ever heard deck-hands joking in with mocking exaggeration, greeting each other with, 'oh, herro.' There was mocking exaggeration right now, but it was coming from the speaker's use of his title; it sounded like doing so put a bad taste in her mouth.

The tiny psyker had never heard such smug baiting in one syllable as she did when he replied, "Oh?"

"I reminded you the last time you did this, Lord Inquisitor," her voice was dripping with such venom that Ellie was tempted to look over at her, but her Master looked so much less than impressed. If someone was still looking, they'd notice she was interested when her Master wasn't, and she didn't want to seem out of touch with him or disobedient. More, the fact that he'd done this before – had another apprentice he'd Sanctioned and taken – intrigued her: when did that happen? Where was this person now? How did he pick?

"We have protocols for this," the woman was talking again. "Peer review isn't something that's optional. And yet – _again_ – you pick up some… _thing_ with no warning, no approval, no external inspection; decree that it's safe, and decide to keep it for yourself."

Ellie had been good: she'd managed to remain focused on her Master, to display a healthy connection to him, unwavering respect, but she'd been called a _thing_. In a millisecond, she turned her face to where the woman's voice was coming from. Lord Inquisitor Mantara Suzaku was a petite woman with softly luminous golden skin, glossy, pin-straight black hair, and delicate, exotic features currently marred by an expression of loathing directed at the little blonde waif and her Master.

The girl's too-large blue eyes narrowed for just an instant as she considered Lord Inquisitor Suzaku; looking more _into_ her than _at_, searching for what the woman could have found so reprehensible about her that she was relegated to _thing_-hood. Curiously, she pushed her sixth sense out: perhaps it was that this woman detested all psykers – but no, the woman was definitely a psyker herself. The closer she looked, the more disgust she saw the woman bore; it wasn't something she wanted to continue looking at. It had only taken her a heartbeat to observe, and she turned back to her Master, who still looked unimpressed.

"It's reckless and irresponsible," the woman _still_ wasn't done complaining, "– that thing could have a daemon in it and you'd never know," the woman was also still convinced Ellie ranked significantly lower than personhood "– and now it's seen us, been given a full briefing of our most clandestine actions –"

"Thirty-six hours, Suzaku," Ellie's Master interrupted in a tone she'd never heard before. It sounded like he was talking to a child – slightly condescending, marginally impatient – he'd never even spoken to _her_ like that. She could hear the woman's near-apoplectic gasp at his lack of respect from across the large room. "I spent thirty-six hours plumbing the depths of my apprentice's mind, rooting out any foothold for weakness." Had it truly been that long that she'd lain on the table with him inside her head? "That's generously more than anything you could ask for – and double what you could perform on your best day." There was an angry hiss from the woman's direction that he cut off with his final, crushing insult directed solely at the other Inquisitor Lord, "And who knows what sort of taint could be passed along if I did it your way?"

"You should be sanctioned for your actions, Mordekai." Both rage and outrage had turned her voice into something that resembled a whistling kettle and Ellie quite suddenly wished for a sock to stuff in the woman's mouth and make her shut up.

Perhaps it was her Master's utter lack of regard to the threat that soothed any fear she would otherwise feel. Or perhaps she didn't want to appear afraid that her Master couldn't defend himself – or her – in a tenuous situation. Or even that balking now would undermine her worth in the eyes of people he had to at least work with. Whatever the case, she kept her eyes affixed to him, her chin up, the same soft smile that had been lingering the entire time in place. One of his brows raised with exaggerated mock-graciousness and he drawled, "If that's what you believe, Suzaku, _you_ should make a move to censor me."

There was a challenge Ellie didn't quite understand in that – something dangerous that her Master was baiting this woman into. She wasn't quite sure how it would turn.

Lord Inquisitor Suzaku's exotic, dark eyes narrowed and then her voice rang out in the vaulted room that seemed to be holding its breath, "I move that Lord Inquisitor Mordekai be censored for flagrant disregard for protocol and potentially dangerous abuse of authority."

Somewhere across the room, a figure stepped forward from its shadowed alcove and supplied, "I second."

"All in favor?" the floor moderator called; but only three more people that she could see stood up. "All opposed?" The five stood back, but at least two dozen stepped forward. "The motion has been denied."

Ellie searched her Master's face as it turned down to her and she beamed up at him; she didn't fully understand what had happened there, but he was pleased with the outcome. That was enough for her.

* * *

Her brow was crossed by the time he guided her through the labyrinth of halls back to his suite, and her mouth pursed into an uncharacteristically flat little line. He closed the door and, now that she definitively couldn't be overheard by any random passersby, took a deep, almost troubled breath. "The other Inquisitor Lord that started trouble with you doesn't like us very much, does she?"

He seemed completely unconcerned about this and moved toward the data lectern, she supposed to make some cursory notes about the meeting. "Lord Inquisitor Suzaku advocates no one but herself, a quality common in most who hold her station."

The little mark between her eyebrows took hold as she nodded slowly. She took a breath, thoughtful for a moment, and began, "She's a very beautiful woman. That might be part of the problem." She had once overheard her father saying that attractive people are often spoiled; that once they know it, they abuse it and develop a weak and selfish character. "The other part is that she's obviously m'yor le brancka te piguyen faswe gra'arbdes urn fervinaque als bluemdeh yingtao. Densie logdaso neemal spita obors da naris aoqui sayo nayolfect." She'd lapsed into the lilting cadence of shipboard dialect; it was the only way she knew to convey the extent of what she meant.

She only had a hairsbreadth of a second to see his stern expression before he cuffed the back of her head – particularly harder than he'd done the sole time before. His voice reminded her of the void: just as cold and intimidating when he warned sharply, "You'd do well to hold your tongue in judgment of your betters, lest you find it removed in its course."

Her face flushed hot; she took a faintly stuttering breath and then hung her head. She wished she could melt into the floor and disappear forever. If she'd just kept quiet he wouldn't be angry at her now. Hadn't she decided she would be better off sticking to only necessary communication? Nothing had happened that should have convinced her otherwise. After all the progress she'd made, she had to go and ruin it by saying something – some stupid opinion that hadn't even been requested.

"Your room," he all but growled, "now. I expect to not see you until morning."

She swallowed, nodded, and retreated without lifting her gaze to meet his. She also didn't apologize. She was sorry that she'd said it, now that she'd gotten in trouble for it, but it didn't change the fact that it was the truth.

* * *

She'd taken great care to hang the dress up as nicely as she'd found it. Her little fingers caressed the satin of the skirt, gripping it with the fleeting spasm of almost heartbroken dejection that wrenched her face into the unbearable frown that comes just before crying; but she swallowed it down with a great sigh and forced her fingers to open and smooth out the tiny wrinkle she'd created. Shaking her head as she pulled her jumper over it, she retreated to the bed and clambered up into it. She leaned against the headboard, wrapped her arms around her shins, and laid her cheek to her knees, eyes open but unseeing.

She'd been an idiot.

How could she have done that? Had she thought he would agree? That it was funny? Had she thought it would make him smile? Had she even thought at all?

She must not've; the Lord Inquisitor didn't find much funny. And he was right: it wasn't her place to make rude comments. Truth be told, she didn't even completely understand what she'd said. She'd heard a midshipman say it to one of his friends as he left a disciplinary meeting in her father's unpretentious office. It had left the impression that the man thought Nic Reiker cared too much about the letter of rules to be anything but a nasty sod. He was right, of course, and the man's friend had laughed.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter if she was right. It didn't matter if her Master never laughed. It didn't matter if he was ten or a hundred times as cold and distant and scary as her father. It didn't even matter if she liked him. The only thing that mattered was that he kept her. If he didn't, she'd have nowhere to go. She had known what was at stake, and she'd still upset him by being disrespectful. She hadn't said it until they were in his suite because she knew it would be an embarrassment if someone else had heard. By that virtue, alone, she should have known not to say it.

Maybe she'd thought it would be alright, since he'd been uncharacteristically gentle when he Sanctioned and Branded her. Maybe she thought he was just a little more accessible now, like the Seneschal. Maybe she felt closer to him because he'd been at her side and in her head and things had almost started to become normal.

And she'd gone and messed it up. And he was angry.

She couldn't afford another mistake like this.

The door opened and she faced it with a sharp breath, only to let it out in relief when Michael Corrigan stepped in. He took the briefest instant to survey the room; and then, as if absolutely nothing were wrong, he briskly stated, "Dinner," as he held out a plate covered to retain heat.

"Thank you, Seneschal Corrigan, but my," her voice sounded off even to her own ears: too high, soft, and close to breaking. He was acting as if everything was normal, though, and she didn't want to seem sniveling. She bit her lip and tried to force a smile through it. She cleared her throat in an attempt to normalize it, "my Master sent me to bed without supper."

The man gave a soft snort and dismissed, "Nothing of the sort."

Well, for the sake of accuracy, he was correct. All the Inquisitor had said was that she was to stay here until morning, but the intent of the punishment seemed clear. Her parents had done the same thing on occasion; she was fairly certain this was just how it worked. But she'd learned her lesson about talking back today, so she wouldn't correct him and instead excused, "I don't want to make him any angrier." Truth be told, she didn't think she could eat if she wanted to, now. Her stomach was tied in knots from worry and she felt she might be sick.

The Seneschal gazed at her hard and inscrutably for a long moment. She saw the slightest tic at the corner of his scarred eye, and then he intoned with the timbre he often used when joking with her Master, equal parts exaggerated graciousness and unfelt condescension, "Then you should have dinner."

She watched him for an equally long moment, inspecting the area that had twitched, wondering if that had happened before, or with any regularity and she'd just never noticed, and what caused it. Finally, she gave a slow nod and almost shyly requested, "Could you please put it on the nightstand, Seneschal Corrigan? I'll get to it in a little bit."

The stare with which he fixed her told her in no uncertain terms that even the Throne couldn't help her if she didn't. Despite this, she smiled, she hoped encouragingly, to show him she understood the terms of the arrangement, and he set down the plate where she'd indicated.

"Thank you," she offered, and truly meant it; he nodded in a way that convinced her he'd be watching through the very fabric of the walls to make sure she held up her end of that little deal and then left, closing the door behind him.

* * *

"You wouldn't believe what she said to me today." The Lord Inquisitor deposited two generous glasses of amasec on the table between himself and his Seneschal, the corner of his mouth twisted up.

"Suzaku's never been a big fan of yours, Pieter." He made the point while taking his tumbler in hand and lifting it – perhaps to his friend's good health, or simply for emphasis. "There's not much she could say that would sup-"

"Not her," a rumble of a chortle came from Mordekai's chest as he picked up his own. "Giselle." The brow over Corrigan's milky eye lifted expressively and he took a sip as his employer expanded, "When we got back from the council she started telling me that Suzaku m'yor le brancka te piguyen –"

He was interrupted by a startled cough as Corr pounded once on his own chest, having swallowed the liquor down the wrong pipe. His eyes were wide with delight as he half-choked, "The greater daemons, she did –"

The other side of the Inquisitor's lips were quirking of their own volition, as hard as he must've been trying, he couldn't quite seem to keep the expression from creeping in. "Oh, it gets better. Verbatim, she says that the woman's had a stick lodged up her ass for so long that it's grown into a tree that makes piss and vinegar the way most trees make fruit. Since she's plugged up there's nowhere for her to spew it from but her mouth, and she keeps her nose in the air all the time so the stench isn't so bad."

They were both silent for the briefest of seconds and then uproarious laughter filled the small study. By the end of the long outburst, Mordekai's forehead was resting in his hand, elbow on the table, and he was shaking it just as his shoulders shook from the force of his deep chuckles.

The Seneschal picked up his glass again, this time the gesture certainly a salute, "You do know how to pick'em, Pieter." Another snicker escaped him. "Ah," the exhalation was half-sigh, half-subsiding laughter and he shook his own head before taking a satisfying mouthful of the amasec, "It's always the quiet ones."

* * *

_What's this? An actual note from the author that contains author-y-type notes?!  
_

_Chapter Trivia:  
_

_The chapter's title, "The Quiet One," obviously refers to Corr's closing statement, "It's always the quiet ones." However, in this chapter, consisting of 4,600 words, Ellie doesn't speak until about 3,000 words in and only speaks six times totaling less than 100 words: that's approximately 2% of the entire deal. _

_The shipboard dialect I've created is actually not complete gibberish - it's a messy amalgamation of four different real-world languages, devolved and phonetically spelled to ease its reading. Language is constantly evolving. Consider that 50 years ago no one knew what a taco was. 150 years ago most people didn't use the word "hello." 400 years ago there was no such word as "bedroom." In 400 years people might not be able to read this any more than you could pick up an original copy of Beowulf and skim through it. Our ability to communicate is one of humanity's greatest - and most tenuous - achievements. Just some food for thought.  
_

_-G  
_


	14. Chapter 14 Blackmoon

_A note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Geist:_

_Well, I didn't make it in time for Christmas Eve or Christmas, but for anyone who does Boxing Day, happy holiday! (Hey, it's before the new year… I count this as a success.) _

_I'm trying to work on your suggestions, I am. You'll have to let me know how it's going. So, you know, here's me begging for reviews again. _

_Kudos to you if you've figured out why Corr's eye twitched last chapter. _

_I'm considering putting up a quick one-shot in Burning Bridges before I finish this section, but it could probably wait. Let me know which you want first! _

_Enjoy and the best to you and yours,_

_-G_

* * *

**Part 3 – The Shadowed Council**

Chapter 14 – Blackmoon

* * *

Her Master agreed with Lord Inquisitor Suzaku. He thought she was a _thing_. That was the only possible explanation. Why else would there be _trousers _hanging on the back of her door?

Just like yesterday, she had woken up to find her dress from the Lacertus (dyed black to cover the grox blood) gone and another set of clothing in its place. Yesterday, of course, the replacement had been the most beautiful dress she'd ever seen and she'd gone to him to confirm that she was even allowed to touch it, much less put it on. But yesterday she'd made him angry.

And today he'd left her boy's clothes. It wasn't so much that she didn't know _how_ to put said trousers on – the process was fairly straightforward, she'd just never had any reason to do it because girls wore skirts – it was more that this seemed like a particularly cruel way to deliver the message.

_Mouth shut, head down_, she coached herself as she slipped on the matching black, gold-trimmed tunic and then the loafers that had taken the place of yesterday's glossy slippers. She was in no position to argue, and she was determined to not let him see how much it stung. She was determined to not start any trouble at all. She would keep her opinions to herself – like he did – and it would keep the waters between them calm. She'd do what he told her to. She'd be his little grox-killing _thing_ if that was what it took.

Really, what other option did she have?

If she crossed him, he'd give her a whop and send her to her room, eventually break her, and get what he wanted – or get sick of her and send her to Terra to burn. She had a feeling it wouldn't matter much to him either way. The only person she could affect was herself, so why make it harder than it had to be?

With a deep breath, she picked up her dinner plate from last night and opened her door as quietly as she could. She hadn't been able to eat much of it – she'd just been too nauseated with worry. She really had tried, but she knew if the Seneschal saw she'd get an earful, so she was hoping her hardest she could scrape the dish off without being noticed by anyone.

Of course this had to be one of those mornings that said Seneschal was visiting. _Nothing for it, really_, she internally groused as she took care of the plate. Sooner or later she'd hear about it. Turning to the table, she seated herself with a subdued, "Good morning, Master – Seneschal Corrigan," and picked up her spoon. While the Inquisitor Lord barely spared her a glance, his friend was giving her a cool, hard look. She prayed he didn't call her out at the table (or in front of her Master at all) and bowed her head, taking a small mouthful of porridge. She had to at least make it look like nothing was wrong even though her stomach was doing wrenching flips again.

It seemed like an interminable time before her Master finished his meal. She'd been trying to make a good show of doing the same, but the moment his fork dropped to the empty plate she swept up her half-full bowl and dashed over to clear his setting. Her arm accidentally brushed against the sleeve of his jacket in her haste to retrieve the dish and she turned to stammer an apology for…

… Jacket?

Her Master was wearing… clothing… as in… made from cloth. She'd been with him two months now and she'd _never_ seen him out of his power armor. He was sitting there, though, in trousers and tall boots and a long jacket with a high collar as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Much like his mantle from the day before, the quality was impeccable. The cut of the ensemble emphasized more than hid the fact that underneath the power armor he was still enormous: all vast shoulders, broad chest, and huge arms.

She realized she was staring like a simpleton, and he was giving her an impatient look. She ducked her head and retreated, seeking refuge in the alcove by the sink where she dragged over a stepping stool to wash the dishes.

"Not now." She turned her head to face the Inquisitor, confused. She _always_ did the dishes after a meal. "Come," he ordered, and she hopped down immediately, "we're leaving." She crossed to where he was standing, setting his napkin aside, and she waited for him to lead the way with her head bowed. He didn't move. "Better behavior than yesterday."

It was an order issued in a tone that made her belly twist so badly that she could practically feel it beneath the skin where her laced fingers lie. She nodded and he quite suddenly seized her jaw and drew it up until she faced him. A nod wasn't going to be good enough, was it? It wasn't like he'd already drilled the point home or anything. Fixing a smile she hoped looked appeasing, she replied, "Of course, Master."

He relinquished her face, turned on his heel, and walked out the door.

* * *

Two armed guards stood sentry outside the door they halted before, but her Master said nothing to them, and they nothing to him. He knocked twice in rapid succession, and after the slightest of pauses, it slid open. No one was waiting there, though. The door must've slid open on its own – or someone did it without touching it. As she was considering if she could open a door with her mind alone, he stepped in and proceeded into what she could only assume was the living space. It looked opulent without being gaudy, and as soon as she stepped through, the door closed behind her.

Her Master stopped a few paces in, and she lingered back a bit, inspecting the sconces and devotionals on the wall. Something moved in her peripheral vision, and her eyes zeroed on a man coming around the corner toward them. He was very small and very old; he carried himself as a man frail from age, and his tunic and trousers were no more embellished than her own. When the old man had come within five or so paces, her Master, the Inquisitor Lord, took one knee and crossed an arm over his chest.

She boggled at him. First clothes and now kneeling? Who was this clone and what had he done with her Master? Further, he bowed his head to the little old man, and his rumbling tone conveyed a reverence she'd only ever heard in the chapel as he greeted, "Master." Her eyes trained slowly back over to the old man. Holy Terra… this was _his_ master. Her knees and palms hit the floor as she dropped in a graceless crash, scrabbling to avoid giving offense. With her Master as cold and hard as he was, this man was bound to be –

"Don't be ridiculous, Pieter," the man scoffed in a voice that reminded her of her uncle's whiskey – all deep warmth and smoke. "You own one pair of pants. Don't ruin them on me."

She watched her Master rise and cross to his own. There was a sucking, vacuum-like feeling near her sinuses from the psyniscience as the Inquisitor moved away, and then a solid sensory wall crashed into her. It was as if someone had dumped a bottle of ether into a bucket of chlorine in the middle of the room.

Her eyes watered and she held back a wheezing, choking cough that she couldn't suppress more than a few seconds, and once she started she couldn't stop. Both pairs of eyes turned the moment the first sound left her; for the second day in a row now, she wished she could just disappear. Three seconds later, when she was sure her Master was going to rip her down to gory ribbons for coughing like a lho-fiend, the old man spoke again.

"Forgot about that –" the near-smell faded sharply until it was just noticeably there – a steady presence like her Master's, "– how sensitive wyrdlings can be. Have a seat, son." He did so himself in one of the room's matching chairs, propping his feet up. Once he was settled he met her eye and gave a sharp little jerk of his head for her to come over.

She approached her Master's chair, her back mostly to the man who'd motioned her over, and mouthed, 'I'm sorry' to the Inquisitor Lord. One of his brows rose so slightly, and his eyes flicked down to ottoman before readdressing the other man. She sat, folded her hands in her lap, and turned her body so that she could watch both of them.

"You played a dangerous game with Suzaku yesterday." Even _she_ knew that was a loaded comment.

"I won," her Master replied with a shrug.

"A fact that you unnecessarily rubbed in her face." Either the man got very good reports from the council meeting or he was there. "There were better ways to handle it."

"My way worked just fine."

"Your way could have turned on you with one wrong syllable and then you'd have a real mess on your hands. Pieter, you can't afford to be brash about this. Suzaku's at Council considerably more often than you are. One day you'll turn around and she'll have the support she needs to take you down, and if you keep giving her incentive, she won't hesitate."

"She wouldn't hesitate anyway, father; but that day wasn't yesterday and it won't be next week. After that I'll be going home and it won't be an issue."

"Just watch your tail," he replied; Ellie was absorbing the wrinkles and real concern etched into his face, "she's gunning for you hard."

Father. Her Master had called him father. They obviously weren't actually related. They looked nothing alike. This man was her Master's master. Even from the little she'd seen, though, she determined he had a kindness to him that the Inquisitor Lord lacked. He seemed like the type who might proudly adopt the apprentice he'd taught so hard. The girl decided it was a particularly _nice_ gesture, to extend his –

It felt like a shiny, hooked knife was stabbing at her brain. She couldn't tell where it was coming from, but she knew it wasn't her Master and her gut told her nothing and no one else belonged in her head. She focused everything she had – every micro-joule of power – into a shout of "No!" and pushed whatever it was away so hard that she physically fell off the ottoman. The feeling abated immediately, and she whipped her face to the corners of the room to determine where it had come from.

The old man must have thought it was funny, if his chuckle had anything to do with it. "Delightful." She shot him a quick, almost reproachful glare and shook her head to alleviate the ringing in her ears. It certainly hadn't felt that way on her end. "Lot of potential there, Pieter." He smiled and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth deepened. "Up you get then, little one, let's have a look at you."

After glancing back to her Master for confirmation, she crossed to the other ottoman and sat carefully on its edge. She ducked under the piercing eyes could feel roving her, and she clasped her hands nervously and bit her lip, awaiting whatever pronouncement he would make evaluating her. Then there was a single finger underneath her chin; it crooked and tipped her face up gently. He was still smiling kindly and introduced himself, "I'm Tiberius Blackmoon." He held out his other hand to shake and she took it shyly. She'd heard his name somewhere before…

It took a moment of awkward silence for her to reply, "Ellie Reiker, sir. A pleasure."

Tiberius Blackmoon looked over her shoulder and mentioned to her Master, "She's going to be a lot smaller than –"

"I know," he replied. She couldn't see his expression because there was still a hand on her chin, but there was a curious quality in his voice when he continued, "I'm sure she'll find a way to make up for it."

Blackmoon's eyes locked into hers, even though he was still talking to her Master, and he smiled reassuringly, "I'm sure she will."

She nodded carefully to confirm this theory. She wasn't quite sure how yet, but she didn't want to let either of them down.

"Now, Ellie," another wrinkle formed at his brow and his voice turned grave as if he were about to ask her a very serious question, indeed. "Can you tell me how it is that a sensible little girl like yourself," his hand dropped away, giving her free range of motion, "doesn't like ice cream?"

* * *

She felt eternally grateful to Pieter Mordekai. He was hard, yes, and he wasn't always the greatest teacher, but he'd taught her enough that she didn't make a fool of herself with his master. For the better part of two hours, now, she'd been conversing with Tiberius Blackmoon. She never got the impression that he felt it a chore to speak for so long with a child; to the contrary, she got the distinct impression that he didn't particularly consider her a child. Not once had he spoken down to her. He hadn't used small words for her benefit like most adults did.

She knew he was testing her, of course. He'd asked her about the structure of the Imperium and the story of Horus's betrayal. They'd spoken long about exemptions allowed by the Ecclesiarchy and the extent of the Inquisition's power. And each time she was sure she'd said everything she knew about a subject, he'd prompt "And?" or "What else?" and she'd realize she knew more than she thought she did. She didn't feel the same pressure as when taking one of her Master's tests, but she inexplicably wanted to succeed at this more.

"You're thinking about something else," the old man said without a trace of accusation in his tone during a lull in their conversation. "What is it?"

She felt her cheeks go a little red and she bit her lip. She hadn't intended to appear inattentive and that he'd noticed –

His finger was lifting her chin again and she saw his wrinkled face bore the most reassuring smile. After a beat of hesitation, she admitted, "I keep trying to remember where I've heard your name before."

"Ah," he leaned back in his chair, "I was at the Council yesterday."

Her brow crossed as she wracked her memory. "I don't remember you speaking."

"I didn't. I was presiding."

Presiding… Presiding! Her body preternaturally stilled, mouth dropped open, and she felt all the blood drain from her face as she realized what that meant: Tiberius Blackmoon: Inquisitorial High Lord of Terra… and here she was jabbering at him like an idiot for two hours!

His chuckle snapped her from her panicked reverie. "There's a lesson to be learned here, little Ellie."

There were many lessons to be learned from this: to not underestimate little old men foremost, to pay closer attention so she would realize who people were –

"No matter how high a rank a man might hold, he will only ever be a man. Do you understand what I mean?"

Her little brow crossed for a moment, and then she slowly nodded her head.

* * *

Many hours later, after supper and three long games of Regicide, Ellie was curled up on the ottoman by Blackmoon's feet, dozing but not completely asleep, softly whispering the Litany of Protection into the pillow of her arms. Her voice provided a soft buzz in counterpoint to the intermittent drone of quiet conversation between the adults, growing sparser as the hour grew later.

"She's sharp," the High Lord told the Inquisitor as if validating his choice in apprentice.

"Mm," was the noncommittal reply.

"Nothing like your last," apparently Blackmoon knew exactly how to coax his old apprentice into conversation.

Mordekai snorted, "Doriana was born a fighter – she just needed someone to show her the weapons she had and point a direction to head in. I knew exactly what I was getting into with her. This one's all surprises… clever, resolute –"

"Sweet," the old man interjected as one of his heavily lined hands came to rest on the source of golden curls spilling over his knee.

"That can be an advantage if she's all iron underneath."

"Just don't forget to enjoy it."

What followed then was a long, heavy silence, the younger man's expression incredulously scoffing off the idea and the elder's ensuring that he was quite serious. It was the sort of exchange that passed between two people who knew each other for so long that a mere look could say more than a gross of words. Their staring match was only interrupted by a soft, mellow voice asking, "Is it time to leave, sir?"

Blackmoon looked down to the little face turned up to his and replied gently, "Just about. Ah," he groaned gently as he stretched down and then drew her into his lap with, "Come here, my girl."

It felt like it had been ages since anyone had held her; she'd almost forgotten how nice it was to wrap her arms around a neck and snuggle into a collar and just be close. She realized beyond a hand on her head or face (or changing the bandage on her neck) no one had so much as _touched_ her since Doctor Trixie. It felt so _normal, _though, and her heart suddenly ached for this and all the other normal things she no longer had but desperately missed.

She felt him smile against the top of her head and he bid with a murmur, "Work hard."

"Of course, sir."

He pulled back slightly. "'Sir's a little formal don't you think?" She frowned at that. Well, of course it was. That was how proper, polite children acted. "Maybe 'grandfather' would fit better."

'Grandmaster' would probably fit best, in all honesty. A title like that _would _sound ridiculous, though, and if her Master's master looked at his apprentice as his child, it sort of followed that his apprentice's apprentice would be his grandchild… right? The whole concept rather made her head hurt, but she decided (as she'd never had a grandfather before) that if she could have chosen one, she would have chosen Tiberius Blackmoon. So she smiled and nodded eagerly and hugged him tighter until her Master cleared his throat and announced that it was time to leave.

"Goodbye, Grandfather," she dropped a quick kiss on the hollow of his cheek.

"Be well, Ellie," he replied with one last hug, and she trotted back to her Master, waiting by the door.

* * *

The moment they got back into his suite with the door closed, he rounded on her harshly. "You repeat that to no one," his voice was deadly quiet and she forced herself to stand her ground. She hadn't done anything wrong yet.

"No one, Master," she confirmed, working hard to keep the tremor from her voice.

He stared at her hard for a long moment and then must have finally decided she understood how serious he was before he dismissed her.

Suddenly weary, she retreated to her room, laying down fully clothed on top of the covers and staring into space. Things had been lovely and normal for one brief, shining moment. Apparently lovely and normal weren't meant to last.

* * *

_Another note:_

_I sort of realized after I reread it that I keep referencing Pieter's last apprentice (especially in the interlude) and you still haven't met her (hence me wanting to write a quick "Meet V" chapter in the side-stories section). I also realized that Mordekai and Blackmoon's conversation comparing the girls almost sounds like a Thor/Loki scenario, which is sort of legit except Ellie's not a frost giant or a villain. I suppose the 'acts like a giant douche' part remains to be seen lol. _

_Also, if you're wondering how the Inquisitor Lord got to be so hard when his master was Blackmoon's level of nice, just remember that people often treat their kids and their grandkids __**way**__ differently. _

_Keep an eye out for another update (if not here, at Burning Bridges). _

_-G_


	15. Chapter 15 Perils

_Well, everyone, here we are, already in February_

_And with a considerably shorter chapter than you probably expected, having given me all this time, I know. Let's just say that 2013 has been nuts thus far. I was feeling sick about New Years, but I figured I was just tired because my sister had come up from Georgia (the state, not the country) and I had the sniffles because everyone has the sniffles right now. _

_Of course, a week went by of me feeling like absolute crap and I ended up in the hospital for four days with pneumonia (which sucks like a boss, don't get it) and a 104 fever. Then they sent me home with insanely strong antibiotics (and the kind of cough syrup Doctor Trixie would give out – you know, with the codeine) and the command of bed rest for another ten days, which completely screwed the classes I'd signed up for. _

_During that time my war-dog (the black lab I got thirteen Christmases before this last one who had become the unofficial mascot of my gaming group) passed away; I'm still seriously bummed about it. If anyone's had a pet that long they know it becomes a member of the family. Writing was just really hard, and even when I wanted to, the codeine made it so that I'd pull my computer into my lap and fall asleep reading what I'd already written. _

_I finally got a clean bill of health, went back to work, and then promptly took the "vacation" time I'd already scheduled so that I could go to a WWII reenacting event and sell charity calendars and other pinup-related paraphernalia. I barely had time for sleep (with reveille at 0530 and parties until 0330 or whenever the prop-blast knocked me out), much less writing, and the day after I left there I returned to work. So here is me on my first day off, when I should be unpacking and bringing things to the dry cleaners, writing for you. Sorry it's not much; I'm hoping that 2013 has decided it's kicked my butt enough to settle down now. (Note from five days later: it hasn't. A friend of mine was killed on impact in a three-car accident caused by black ice, and another friend's dad died of a massive stroke. 2013 can kiss my bum.)_

_For actual author-y-type notes, I'd like to thank Someone T__ook My Name _; a while back he had feared that I'd lost inspiration (instead of simply having zilch on time) and gave me a suggestion for a playmate for Ellie. Now, way, way back in brainstorming before I decided Ellie needed solitary confinement on the Black Ship, I'd given her a friend – but the idea fell by the wayside. S.T.M.N.'s suggestion reminded me of it; I also warned that he probably didn't want me using his character (you'll see why) but the inspiration was there and while I took the idea in my own direction, here's credit where credit is due. Also, props if you got that ice cream was seriously out of character for Pieter and was actually Blackmoon's suggestion. 

_We'll be taking a break here in Of Worth until I finish that "Meet V" segment in Burning Bridges, but it shouldn't take too long to make. That part of this story was decided upon a long, long time ago. _

_All the best, _

_-Geist_

* * *

**Part 3 – The Shadowed Council**

Chapter 15 – Perils

He had been watching her for almost an hour, now. Not with undivided attention, of course; she would have considered that staring, which she'd been taught was incomprehensibly rude (and certainly would have told him so). Most often, when she stole a quick glance up through her lashes, his head was ostensibly bowed over a book, much like hers. Every few moments, though, she'd get that odd sensation that someone's eyes were on her, and she'd catch him peering curiously across the tables at her for longer than she would personally deem necessary. She wondered if she should tell her Master about it.

The Inquisitor Lord was in a different part of the vast librarium, though, with his own matters to attend. He'd left her at one of the long tables in a corner of the establishment with a book containing her arithmetic lesson and a list of equations to complete before he returned. If he got back and she wasn't finished, things might turn ugly fast: especially if all she had to offer was an excuse that some strange boy kept staring at her.

The boy in question had come to this section after she had; parting with whom she could only assume was his own master before setting himself up two tables away and facing her. He was perhaps three years older than she was, and pleasant-looking enough. He hadn't said a word to her, which was fine, considering she truly was trying to work; it was his non-conversational attention that she found distracting, and she wasn't quite sure how to handle this sort of situation.

On the Lacertus, she supposed, she might have offered a friendly wave or a smile, but she was certain the moment she did, her Master would round the corner, catch on to an act he'd later call something like 'insipidly blithe civility,' and toss her back in his suite until they left Scintilla. She wasn't sure what sort of policy he held about making friends or interacting with people her own age, but she couldn't imagine it being –

"There's a quicker way to do that, you know."

She looked up to find earnest brown eyes in a thin, pale face topped with unruly chestnut hair staring at her work over her shoulder. The boy had packed up his satchel and must've been passing by her on his way out – or he'd finally just decided to come over after an hour of watching. Her brow crossed slightly and she slowly shook her head.

"Here, I learned this last year." Without preamble he deposited his pack and sat next to her, pulling her notebook towards him. "You write it like this and then flip it, right? Now this and this cancel out and this reduces here," he crossed out certain numbers and substituted others, "and when you multiply across you won't have to factor it." He pushed the pages back to her with an easy, lopsided grin, "See?"

She looked his work over for a moment and then offered a shy, grateful smile and nodded. It was going to save her time getting the list of equations finished.

"Show me on this one," he pointed to the next problem on her list and leaned in so close that her elbow bumped him as she wrote.

"Sorry –"

"No sweat," he brushed it off and backed up a bit. "Yeah, you can take the five out of both of those – that makes this a one and this a three and boom, you're done." She bit her lip, smiling in accomplishment as she turned back to him to see that he, too, was smiling. "I'm Con, by the way." He stuck out a thin hand, knocking into the tip of her pen and sending a few dots of ink to land in the lower corner of the page. "Sorry – Constantine Schley – I'm Lord Inquisitor Andreus's apprentice."

"Ellie," she took the hand that dwarfed her own and shook it politely, "Giselle Reiker."

"Lord Inquisitor Mordekai's new apprentice – yeah. I thought I recognized you. That was the most lively Council meeting I've been to, and we've pretty much lived here for six months. So you're a psyker, too, huh?" He angled his head to get a better view of the mark on her neck.

She self-consciously rubbed at the bumps of the brand and inclined her head. "And you?"

The boy nodded vigorously and rolled up his jumper sleeve, showing her the branding scar on the inside of his forearm. It wasn't black like hers was, and so long as he had on a proper shirt it would be easy to hide. She couldn't tell if that it was more unfair or unsafe. Everyone would know she was a monster with one glance, but at least they'd know what to expect.

Con rolled his sleeve back down and Ellie noticed a rip in it, inspecting the long tear. "What happened?"

"Oh, I got caught on some exposed rebar near the construction zone. Andreus told me not to run, but – you know how it is. It was bleedin' something awful, too. Lucky thing, psyking – I only got the details of healing down last week and look: not even a scratch." He proudly twisted his arm this way and that.

"I'm fairly sure I could do it," she mused as she worked on her problem set, "I just haven't."

"You definitely need to try, then," Con told her seriously. "It's no good if you think you can and then find out you can't when your guts are fallin' out."

Ellie felt her nose unconsciously crinkle in disgust. She'd have to talk to her Master about working on it.

"Finish up your work and then we can go practice," the boy instructed, crossing his arms eagerly and settling in.

* * *

Once they found Lord Inquisitor Mordekai, she signaled Con to stay back a few paces while she handled this; if she got shot down, she didn't want him in trouble, too. Carefully positioning herself between the two and schooling the nervousness from her voice, she ventured, "Master?"

He must've known she was there – he hadn't moved a muscle, not even to look down at her. "Did I not leave you with a lesson to complete?" She could hear the subtle bite of impatience and annoyance just at the edge of his tone. Con probably hadn't caught it, but she knew: she was on shaky ground.

She took a deep breath and confirmed, "You did, Master, and I'm finished," and then rushed on before he could tell her off for leaving the place he'd left her, "so may we please go practice?" She couldn't help the timbre of eagerness that crept in; the boy could do things she hadn't even thought of and she desperately wanted to see.

Her Master finally turned his head in her direction, the gaze that seemed like it could cut through the armor of a tank rested first on her, then swept over her shoulder to settle on Con. He was evaluating her new friend – she'd learned that look well over the last few months: the discomfiting, probing stare amid an otherwise blank expression that offered no indication of his opinion. She sent up a silent prayer that Con wasn't fidgeting.

The Inquisitor Lord took one step toward her that ate up the entire space between them, and then another past – now he was standing between her and the other apprentice. Ellie held her breath as he loomed over Con and demanded in his rumble, "Whose are you, boy?"

She peered through her Master's legs, waiting for the response. She heard his introduction, ripe with a confidence she wasn't sure whether he actually felt, "Constantine Schley, my lord, I'm Lord Inquisitor Martell Andreus's."

A long moment of silence ensued, and then her Master ordered, "Take me to him."

* * *

Con led him through the stacks, Ellie trailing behind after having been quelled by a thunderous glare when she tried to move forward to walk near her new friend. She recognized the man Con had parted with earlier as they approached; he looked up toward them and a blatantly smug sort of grin crept over his mouth. Con's master was wiry and had the air of someone who, whether by nature or extended practice, was more flippant and sly than she would personally consider prudent. He moved directly to her Master, holding out his hand toward the power-armored one (she noted with some curiosity that he wore no armor at all), and greeted him as if well-acquainted, "Mordekai."

"Andreus," he responded coolly with a brief shake and that still-piercing gaze. Her Master gave the impression that they'd never met and that he knew the man by reputation alone.

"I see you found my boy – he's causing trouble?" She was acutely aware that one wrong word could send the whole endeavor askew.

"No, they," he glanced first to Con and then over his shoulder at where Ellie stood nervously trying to not wring her hands, "want to play." The word 'play' was said with an inference that she didn't quite understand.

"He probably wants to show off," Andreus said with a chuckle, as if she and Con weren't even there. "There should be a free room down the hall."

* * *

When a room had been cleared out, the Inquisitors afforded them a small measure of open space to work in, though her Master had set her a few paces apart from Con and closer to himself. She wasn't sure why he was acting so formally about this; on the Lacertus she'd been allowed to play with Merica – or even Dorn – on her own. Con drew beside her, elbowing her ribs lightly to draw her attention away from her Master, and then retreating the space he'd closed due to Lord Inquisitor Mordekai's ensuing glare.

"This was the first one I ever did," he grinned and drew in a deep breath. She watched carefully as he took a moment to focus; the itch of ozone began, she could feel the power gathering in him. She tried to absorb everything about it – every mote of order she could glean. And then he flung his arms out wide and there was a blindingly white flash of light and a deafening concussion surrounding him. So completely unexpected, it stunned her for a moment and when orientation finally came back, she needed to blink furiously to focus. Con was hunched over slightly, shaking, and the high pitch ringing in her ears gave way to the sound of him laughing. He was saying something but she only caught the end of, "-ould have seen your face!" When he noticed she wasn't laughing along he peered at her, still grinning, "You alright?"

She nodded while forcing a smile, not wanting to look weak in front of her Master – or Con's. Andreus had leaned against a cabinet toward Mordekai and remarked conversationally, "Obnoxious little cur, isn't he?" Her Master lifted one noncommittal brow and then shifted his focus back to the proceedings.

"Show me your first, now," the older boy instructed as he took a precautionary step back.

Her face swiveled to the Lord Inquisitor Mordekai for approval. If someone asked her, she wouldn't have been able to explain what prompted that, but some instinctive part of her stuttered and hesitated at taking an order from anyone who wasn't him. His eyebrows shifted – one raised a bit and the other flattened; the tiny nuance of expression might as well have demanded, 'what are you waiting for?'

As Ellie drew her feather from her pocket, she heard the other Inquisitor quip, "Obedient little thing. Wish mine was." If her Master had any response to that, she missed it, focusing solely on the routine of harnessing the power before she unleashed it. She swallowed carefully and let the feather go. It started to float toward the ground, and she smiled gently as she reached out her awareness towards it – soft, familiar – and her will swept it back up and into its intricate dance. Her Master had censured her for showing off the first time, but it felt somehow appropriate now.

When she'd sufficiently recreated that first event, she guided the feather back to her pocket and stole a glance at Con. He looked confused, as if he didn't quite understand the complexity of what he'd just witnessed, or perhaps that he would never desire to do something like it. His master, who seemed to be amusing himself with running commentary, offered, "That was… delicate," in a dubious sort of tone that she couldn't help but feel slightly offended by. "Go on, Con," he bid his apprentice, "do something _subtle_."

This time when Con focused and made a funny wave with his hand, she could feel something fluttering against the edges of her mind. She'd hurled all her will back at her grandfather when he'd stabbed at her; this time she only had to brush Con off, like crumbs off her lap. The next moment, he walked directly up to her and extended his hand, "I'm Constantine Schley."

She frowned at him, then at his hand, then back at him, and replied with a baffled, "…I know."

"It's nice to – wait… you do?"

"Con, you introduced yourself in the librarium not an hour ago and helped me with my fractions. How could I _not_ know?"

The boy rounded on his master and demanded almost petulantly, "What happened? Why didn't she forget?"

Andreus rolled his eyes and answered with a superior droll, "She's not a weak-minded serf, kid, and you didn't exactly pull all the stops, did you? If I've told you once, I've said it a dozen times: if you don't put oomph into it, you won't affect anything with a constitution bigger than a grape."

Ellie had to work on stifling her snigger, staring at the floor and biting her tongue to keep the grin away. Con's failure wouldn't have been funny if he hadn't startled her so badly with his blinding and deafening display. Even if it felt like he'd gotten what was coming to him, and no matter how badly she was tempted, she knew her Master would never approve of sticking her tongue out.

"Go on, doll," the other Inquisitor said, even as his apprentice made a soft 'harrumph' and crossed his arms, "show us something good." Her Master gave the slightest of nods, and she was left to consider what might be 'good' enough to get a response better than 'delicate.'

She lifted her hand to chest height, palm towards her, and regarded it a moment while focusing – she'd been getting better at this ever since the grox. Just before she released her will, though, she had an idea. When her hand vanished, she knew the rest of her had as well. At the same time, though, she picked a spot just next to Con: with a bit of extra 'oomph', her image appeared there. He was the one that was startled this time. She bit her lip and grinned. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

After a few seconds her image vanished and she reappeared. Andreus was telling Con that that was something worth learning, but she wasn't particularly interested in his reaction. Instead, she sent an oblique glance through her lashes in her Master's direction. There was the most miniscule of shifts in one of his brows, and a tic in his cheek that pulled the corner of his mouth up for less than a heartbeat. She bowed her head and smiled contentedly. He'd said he trusted she would find a way to make up for being little – it seemed like maybe cleverness would do the trick.

"Something _worthwhile_ this time, Con," his master ordered in a withering timbre and she turned to watch him. He took extra time to focus, then in one fluid motion leaned back, spread his arms, and opened his mouth wide. She heard the noise ripping through the warp before it slammed through the barrier between realities and came out in an aggrieved, massive howl that drowned out even the sound of her own breathing.

She thought that it would die down in a moment or so, but it continued on, and then there was a streak of malignant energy that arced between Con's outstretched hands. Instinct clutched her gut and warned her that something had gone horribly wrong. Another bolt of energy shot out, then another, and another, increasing in speed and size, and then the energy burst outwards, and all she knew was fiery agony that she was sure would consume her and the crack of her head on the floor as she fell.

* * *

The world had gone dark, and when she opened her eyes, everything was hazy and too bright. She had no idea how long she'd been out. Tilting her head to look around, she realized she was still on the floor and in terrible pain. It must've only been seconds.

She had landed on her side, facing Con, who was also on the ground and appeared to be in far worse shape than she was. His body was literally smoking, crumpled and naked and burned, but still breathing. He was alive and hurt, and though she'd never done it before, she knew she could help make him better.

She reached her fingers towards him, concentrating as much as she could, drawing the power in, and forging it into energy to mend his skin, his muscle – anything. She sent it out over the few meters between them, sure that he would be alright, now.

And then he screamed.

He screamed in a way that turned her blood to ice – what happened? What had she done wrong? She was so sure she knew what she was doing – but he was shuddering in new agony and begging the Throne for mercy and all she could do was look on dumbly.

Pain blossomed from her scalp, like someone had snarled her hair and started dragging her up by it, followed by a nauseating throb as a rough hand closed over the burnt flesh of her upper arm. They both tightened briefly, tore out a handful of curls, and then they were gone and her head hit the ground again as she heard the heavy crash of a body slamming into a wall.

Seeing stars, she looked to where she thought she heard the thud to see Con's master crumpled on the ground, rolling himself onto hands and knees and glowering ferally past his still screaming apprentice in her direction. Making a quick mental adjustment, she weakly reached toward Con to try the healing again.

"Check, Giselle," her Master snapped, and her body locked up. What the…? The command had spoken to some hypno-indoctrinated failsafe he'd planted in her brain and shut her down completely, stopping her progress, and then causing her to go slightly limp. She used the last of her energy to roll onto her back with a quiet whimper. Her shoulder contacted the top of his boot as she gazed up to him; a wave of fresh energy tore through her at the point of contact and she couldn't help the weak cry that escaped her. His power forced her burnt flesh to harden up like a scab in a matter of seconds, then the scab ripped off in the space between breaths. There was new, whole skin beneath, though, and despite her hands shaking terribly, she was alright.

He stepped over her, paused next to Con, and then stepped over him as well. She scrabbled forward, finding the boy just as healthy as she was now, and took him by the arm and side, helping him to stand. He leaned heavily on her at first, and then as soon as he was on his bare feet, he recoiled as if contact with her had further burned him. She staggered back a few paces, hand to her heart, hurt when her intentions had been nothing but good, and began to search his face before a harsh cracking noise behind him stole her attention.

Her Master had picked Con's up by the front of his tunic with one gauntleted fist and roughly shoved and pinned him against the wall. Their faces were very close together. In one of the calmest voices she'd ever heard him use, Lord Inquisitor Mordekai conveyed to his peer, "Touch what is mine again, and the Emperor will step down from the Throne before they find so much as a scrap of you." His grip tightened for a moment, and then he dropped the other man as if he meant nothing, and turned away.

"Come," he bid her as he made his way to the door, "and don't look back."

* * *

Some time later, when she was finished with her reading for the evening, she crossed the living quarters in the suite and sat at her Master's feet, curling her legs beneath her and resting her cheek against the smooth ceramite at his shin. With a quiet voice and crossed brow, she asked, "What happened?"

"Peril," he answered, slightly preoccupied with whatever he was reading.

"Will it happen to me?" the thought frightened her quite a bit.

"Almost inevitable," his nose was still in the tome he'd taken from the librarium. "The stronger the force you use, the brighter your soul burns in the Warp, and that calls to all manner of things desperate to get through."

Another long moment of silence came, and she pondered, "I hurt him when I meant to help…" the memory of Con's screaming was burned into her brain.

"There's only so much energy the human body can absorb," he said, as if that explained everything.

"Yes, but – what did I do wrong?"

"You always heal yourself first," he replied, completely missing her point. She was about to protest that that wasn't what she'd meant – and it wouldn't have made a difference – if the healing hadn't worked on Con –

She felt his hand on her head, and his voice was tinged with something she couldn't quite put her finger on as he rumbled almost gently, "I can't stand at your side forever. And you can't trust anyone else to save you, Giselle."

* * *

_For all my Dark Heresy players out there, what happened:_

_Round 1 – Con used Flashbang. Ellie used Spectral Hands._

_Round 2 – Con used Forget Me (Ellie won the Willpower Test, though). Ellie used Distort Vision._

_Round 3 – Con used Warp Howl, but then got the Peril Cataclysmic Blast: "The Psyker's power overloads, arcing out in great bolts of warp energy. Anyone within 2d10 meters of him (including the Psyker) takes 1d10+5 Energy Damage and all the Psyker's clothing and gear are destroyed, leaving him naked and smoking on the ground." Con took 4 Critical Energy Damage to the Body: "The energy ripples all over the character, scorching his body and inflicting 1d10 levels of Fatigue." That 1d10 was more than Con's toughness could bear, knocking him out. Ellie took 3 Critical Energy Damage to the Body: "The attack cooks off the flesh on the chest and abdomen, inflicting 2 levels of Fatigue and leaving the target Stunned for 1 Round. _

_Round 4 – Con was unconscious. Ellie was stunned. _

_Round 5 – Con was still unconscious. Ellie used Healer; if you all remember, though, Con had used this power on himself earlier to take care of his arm, and "[r]epeated uses of this power can be dangerous, however, not to mention painful, and the person's flesh rebels against the intrusion of warp energy. If a person (including the Psyker) is the subject of this power more than once in a six hour period, they must Test Toughness or take 1d5 points of Damage (with no reduction for Toughness Bonus or Armour), rather than being healed." Con obviously failed his Toughness Test. _

_If you don't play Dark Heresy and still read all that, for reference, when Ellie started play as a Rank 1 character at the age of 23 (um, spoiler: she lives that long), she had 8 wounds. 1d10+5 is a LOT of damage, especially for a baby psyker. Warp Perils are no joke, yo._


End file.
